Based on the true story of the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, John Sayles’s indie drama shows the best team in baseball playing dirty when low-balled by the boss and bribed by gangsters.
Sayles recalled, “I had heard of the Black Sox scandal when I was a kid, wondering how could anybody be so low as to throw the World Series?” In his twenties, after reading Eliot Asinof’s detailed non-fiction book Eight Men Out (1963), Sayles was convinced that the White Sox players got involved in fixing the 1919 Series less from greed than from their exploitation by greedy ownership: that this was a larger story of labor vs. capital. Inspired by ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976) and the similarities between Watergate and the Black Sox conspiracies and coverups, Sayles wrote a screenplay, complete with storyboards, in 1977—three years before his directorial debut, RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN (1980). The all-star ensemble includes John Cusack, John Mahoney, Clifton James, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn, and Christopher Lloyd. (1988, 119 min.)
