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Loading... Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (original 1963; edition 2000)by Eliot Asinof, Stephen Jay Gould (Introduction)
Work InformationEight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof (1963)
![]() No current Talk conversations about this book. ![]() ![]() The story of the 1919 White Sox and the throwing of the World Series, this book might seem like a weird choice for me, considering I know little and care less about baseball. But I do know and love Chicago, and I am slowly building up a collection of books about my city, and this seemed like a good addition. The book tells the story well. It digs in, gets facts that were hidden for years, and presents everything in an orderly fashion. It even explained how the baseball parts worked to me, a consummate non-baseballer. What I didn't anticipate, however, was how sad this book would make me. Based on th information available, not a single person who most deserved punishment received it. The baseball players themselves were treated poorly from all sides, and I had no idea how incompetent they were at the whole fix itself. They barely received any money! And given how shittily Comiskey treated them as players, it isn't surprising that they turned on him. He bullied them into contracts they didn't want to sign, and even took advantage of some players' illiteracy. It's just, ugh, you wonder how the players could ever have been so trusting, and you have to remember it was a completely different era and almost a century ago now, but it still just boggles the (modern) mind. Asinaf should also get a special mention for being quite talented at evoking the mood of the time. I found myself using "on the square" in my internal monologue during the time when I was reading this book, so apparently I'd really gotten into the mindset of an early 20th-century-gambler. Hilariously. This is definitely a good read if you are interested in baseball or oppressive business tactics or just an interesting bit of American history. no reviews | add a review
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HTML: In 1919, American headlines proclaimed the fix and cover-up of the World Series as "the most gigantic sporting swindle in the history of America." In this painstaking review, Eliot Asinof has reconstructed the entire scene-by-scene story of the scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox players arranged with the nation's leading gamblers to throw the series to Cincinnati. Asinof vividly describes the tense meetings, the hitches in the conniving, the actual plays in which the Series was thrown, the Grand Jury indictment, and the famous 1921 trial. Moving behind the scenes, he perceptively examines the backgrounds and motives of the players and the conditions that made the improbable fix all too possible. Far more than a superbly told baseball story, this compelling American drama will appeal to all those interested in American popular culture. .No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)364.168Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Criminology Crimes and Offenses Crimes of propertyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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