The Little Brown Reader

The story behind "Eight Men Out"

An Account of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal and 1921 Trial

(From University of Missouri-Kansas City Professor Doug Linder's Famous Trials page. The account is just one item in a very thorough overview of the whole incident, with lots of background info, images, etc.)

Watching the movie Eight Men Out made me curious to find out the full story of the 1919 "Black Sox" World series scandal. The movie moves along pretty quickly, and there are a lot of people involved in the story, so it can be pretty confusing. I recommend keeping its IMDB movie page handy, and reading this account -- that should help you piece it all together. From the way it's told on that page, it sounds like the movie was extremely faithful to the real story, and included almost all the key elements. It adds up to a semi-confusing movie if you don't know the backstory, but I think director/screenwriter John Sayles made the right choice in including all that detail. If it can draw in a relatively baseball-neutral person like me, it must be pretty decent. Of course, the cast of many familiar faces helps.

(As a side note, Professor Linder's Famous Trials page, which I discovered as part of this search, looks to be pretty excellent. It appears to have accounts of some depth of 35 different trials of import throughout history -- from socrates to O.J. Simpson. Not likely you'll see those two together in many other places. ;-))