Yes, It's So, Joe

Eight Men Out

Written and directed by John Sayles

At the USA Nickelodeon

BASEBALL is a religion. At least, that's what the makers of Bull Durham wanted this summer's movie audience to think. But there is nothing religious about a movie, billed as the best baseball film ever, that starts out talking baseball and finishes up talking about the birds and the bees. Bull Durham was more concerned about Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon making love in a bathtub and then in the kitchen and then back to the bedroom. That's religious. But not in the religion of baseball.

John Sayles' Eight Men Out, Hollywood's newest entry in the baseball-movie line-up, however, tells a different story. To Sayles, the national pastime is the purest religion in the world. And when certain people distort this religion, America's greatest sport loses its innocence.

Set in Chicago, 1919, Eight Men Out retells the true story of baseball's most embarrassing moment, the infamous Black Sox scandal. In the fall of 1919, eight members the Chicago White Sox, considered by many to be one of the best teams ever, conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series to the Cinncinati Reds. Although the eight players were acquitted in a court of law, baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned them from ever playing major league baseball again.

The movie, based on a book by Eliot Asinof, tries to answer one central question: what would drive these eight men to sacrifice the game of baseball for $10,000 dollars apiece? Sayles, who also plays Ring Lardner, a Chicago sportswriter who suspects wrongdoing in the Series, offers an explanantion--the stinginess of White Sox owner Charles Comiskey (Clifton James) While Comiskey courts the Chicago media with champagne-catered press conferences, he gives his players flat champagne and no extra bonuses for winning the pennant.

The gamblers, especially Bill Burns (Christopher Lloyd) and Sport Sullivan (Kevin Tighe), notice that some of the star players want more than what Comiskey pays his team. It is the gamblers who bring the idea of a fix to two players, Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker) and Swede Risberg (Don Harvey).

ALL this conspiring occurs at a time when baseball was Chicago's only religion. When kids would worship the hitting of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) or the sparkling fielding of Buck Weaver (John Cusack) and Hap Felsch (Charlie Sheen). What Sayles tries to create in Eight Men Out is a struggle between the innocence of baseball and the outside forces that try to smear baseball's image. Such a struggle leads to tragic consequences.

For example, Jackson, one of baseball's greatest hitters, became a victim of the conspiracy, since he couldn't read or write. Sweeney, whose swing could rival that of some real-life baseball players, brilliantly portrays Jackson as a simple man who knows only one thing: how to hit a baseball. Buck Weaver also represents this innocence, and Cusack does an exceptional job of playing this typical "man against the world" character.

The struggle continues on the field during the World Series games, in the tension between the Chicago team members trying to throw the games and those trying to win them. Sayles makes the baseball action look real and unstaged. This authenticity, along with the sepia-toned cinematography, reinforces the image of baseball as a supposedly innocent event.

Unlike Bull Durham, Eight Men Out is a true baseball film. Although it may go too far in attributing Frank Capra-esque traits to baseball, the movie does attempt to present the sport the way it should be, as an integral part of American culture. When news of the scandal becomes public, Chicago is in shock. The possibility of actual players, the immortal heroes of the city, sacrificing their talent for a few quick bucks is unthinkable in the untarnished world of baseball. Yet Sayles succeeds in bringing his point across. Innocence will always tarnish, whether it be love, war or baseball.