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Eight Men Out

1988 film directed by John Sayles

Eight Men Out is a 1988 film about the Black Sox scandal when the underpaid Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series.

Directed and written by John Sayles, based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 book Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series.
When the cheering stopped, there were... Eight Men Out. (taglines)

Buck Weaver

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  • [as the team prepares for a team photo] Come on, guys. Pretend it's Commy's wake. [team laughs and the picture's taken]
  • I still get such a bang out of it, playing ball. Same as I did when I first came up. You get out there, and the stands are full and everybody's cheerin'. It's like everybody in the world come to see you. And inside of that there's the players, they're yakkin' it up. The pitcher throws and you look for that pill... suddenly there's nothing else in the ballpark but you and it. Sometimes, when you feel right, there's a groove there, and the bat just eases into it and meets that ball. When the bat meets that ball and you feel that ball just give, you know it's going to go a long way. Damn, if you don't feel like you're going to live forever.

Eddie Cicotte

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  • I always figured it was talent made a man big, you know, if I was the best at something. I mean, we're the guys they come to see. Without us, there ain't a ballgame. Yeah, but look at who's holding the money and look at who's facing a jail cell. Talent don't mean nothing. And where's Comiskey and Sullivan, Attell, Rothstein? Out in the back room cutting up profits, that's where. That's the damn conspiracy.

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis

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  • Regardless of the verdict of juries... no player who throws a ball game... no player who undertakes, or promises to throw a game... no player who sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a ball game are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it... will ever play professional baseball again.

Dialogue

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Joe Jackson: [Talking to his bat, "Black Betsy" as he starts to walk to the on-deck circle] C'mon, Betsy. We need a big wallop, now. Big wallop. Tell me when, Betsy.
Swede Riesberg: She ever talk back to you, Joe?
Fred McMullin: Probably sleeps with it, too.
Lefty Williams: Lay off, you guys.
Happy Felsch: Oh, all you crackers stick together, huh?
Swede Riesberg: Hey, ask her for a triple, Joe! You hear me?
Fred McMullin: It's been sixty years since the Civil War, Lefty. Ease up.
Happy Felsch: Besides, you guys lost. It was all in the papers.
Fred McMullin: That wouldn't help Jackson, none.
Mean fan: [taunting Jackson from the stands] Jackson! Hey, Jackson! Can you spell "cat"? Hey, Shoeless Joe! Can you spell "cat"?
Joe Jackson: Hey, mister! Can you spell "shit"?
[the Sox have just won the AL penant and are in the clubhouse. Some champagne bottles are sitting on a table]
Eddie Cicotte: What's the scoop, Harry?
Harry: Mr. Comiskey sent these down for you. A congratulations for a successful pennant race.
Eddie Cicotte: That's awfully white of him. He didn't happen to mention when we can expect that bonus he promised us in return for taking the flag, did he?
Harry: This is your bonus.
[team goes silent]
Swede Risberg: Cheap bastard.
Kid Gleason: Look, fellas, if it was up to me...
Eddie Cicotte: Kid, we've got no beef with you. [opens one of the champagne bottles - nothing happens; glares at Harry] It's flat. [tosses the cork back at Harry, and the team leaves]
Hugh Fullerton: [to one of the groundskeepers] Hey Winslow, your boys look sharp.
Winslow: They're the best I've seen yet. Best white folks team, anyways.
Ring Lardner: I say they're the best, Hughey. The best ever.
Hugh Fullerton: Time will tell, kid. Time will tell.
Eddie Cicotte: You promised me a $10,000 bonus if I won 30 games this year.
Charles Comiskey: So?
Eddie Cicotte: I think you owe it to me.
Charles Comiskey: Harry, how many games did Mr. Cicotte win for us this year?
Harry: 29, Mr. Comiskey.
Eddie Cicotte: You told Kid to sit me down for two weeks; that cost me five games.
Charles Comiskey: We had to get your arm ready for the series.
Eddie Cicotte: I would've won at least two of those games, and you know it.
Charles Comiskey: I have to keep the best interests in the club in mind, Eddie.
Eddie Cicotte: I deserve that $10,000.
Charles Comiskey: 29 is not 30, Eddie. You will get only the money you deserve.
Jimmy: [After Sullivan has been given money from Rothstein for the fix] Holy mother...
Sport Sullivan: Will you look at it, Jimmy? All spread out like that?
Jimmy: Whose is it?
Sport Sullivan: Who do you think? [hands Jimmy part of the money] Now, I want you to take this 10 grand back to Boston. I want you to go to Mulcahy, you know the password, and I want you to put it all down on Cincinnati for the first game. Tell them it's just a hunch I've got.
Jimmy: Some hunch.
Sport Sullivan: [Gives another bunch of the money to Jimmy] Then, you take this to McGinnis. You tell him that I've sure gone crazy, but I want to place 10 big ones on the Reds for the whole show.
Jimmy: I'm laying bets for Mr. Rothstein?
Sport Sullivan: You're laying bets for me. That thieving Jew, he's just given me a loan.
Jimmy: Then what's left for the players?
Sport Sullivan: Jimmy, do you know what you feed a dray horse in the morning if you want a day's work out of him?
Jimmy: What?
Sport Sullivan: Just enough so he knows he's hungry.
[players meet with Attell to collect their money before game one]
Abe Attell: It's all out on bets.
Chick Gandil: [Shoves Attell] That's not good enough!
Abe Attell: Hey! Don't worry, you'll get your money soon enough.
Chick Gandil: When?
Swede Riesberg: And how much?
Abe Attell: A hundred grand, like I said. Twenty after each game.
Happy Felsch: Wait a minute, that's five games. I thought we were just dumping a few.
Abe Attell: No, you lose the first three.
Eddie Cicotte: Kerr's pitching the third. He's not with us.
Swede Riesberg: So, what? We don't hit for him, he'll fold. He's a busher!
Abe Attell: After that, we gotta play it by ear. We gotta make this look good, fellas....
Eddie Cicotte: [quietly to Gandil] Chick, where's the money I asked for?
Chick Gandil: Look under your pillow.
Eddie Cicotte: What?
Chick Gandil: Compliments of Sport Sullivan.
Chick Gandil: You go back to Boston and turn seventy grand at the drop of a hat? I find that hard to believe.
Sport Sullivan: You say you can find seven men on the best club that ever took the field willin' to throw the World Series? I find that hard to believe.
Chick Gandil: You never played for Charlie Comiskey.
[Maharg and Burns find Attell at the racetrack]
Billy Maharg: See, Bill, what did I tell ya? It's the little champ!
Abe Attell: They don't take nickel bets here, fellas.
Bill Burns: Abe Attell, right?
Abe Attell: Yeah. And you...you were a ballplayer.
Bill Burns: Bill Burns.
Abe Attell: "Sleepy" Bill Burns! Strictly bench material.
Bill Burns: I won a few games.
Abe Attell: Well, you lost a few more. [To Maharg] And you, my friend, didn't get that nose bobbing for apples.
Billy Maharg: I'm a fighter, sort of.
Abe Attell: Sort of. Let's see...Philly?
Billy Maharg: Yeah.
Abe Attell: Billy Maharg!
Billy Maharg: Yeah! You've seen me fight?
Abe Attell: Yeah, I've seen ya - you're a bum!
Billy Maharg: Hey!
Abe Attell: Yeah. So, what do you two birds want?
Billy Maharg: Word is that you work for Arnold Rothstein.
Bill Burns: We've got a proposition to make. Could mean big bucks.
Abe Attell: Well, I'm Mr. Rothstein's ears, so let's hear it.
Abe Attell: They say that six or seven guys. I find that hard to believe.
Arnold Rothstein: Doesn't surprise me.
Abe Attell: Yeah, but they're the champs.
Arnold Rothstein: You were champ, Abe, you went down for the bucks.
Abe Attell: This is different.
Arnold Rothstein: Look, champ. I know guys like that. I grew up with them. I was the fat kid they wouldn't let play. "Sit down, fat boy'. That's what they'd say, "Sit down, maybe you'll learn something." Well, I learned something alright. Pretty soon, I owned the game, and those guys I grew up with come to me with their hats in their hands. Tell me, champ, all those years of puggin', how much money did you make?
Abe Attell: The honest fights or the ones I tanked?
Arnold Rothstein: Altogether, I must've made ten times that amount betting on you and I never took a punch.
Abe Attell: Yeah, but I was champ. Featherweight champeen of the world!
Arnold Rothstein: Yesterday. That was yesterday.
Abe Attell: No A.R. you're wrong. I was champ, and can't nothin take that away.
Sport Sullivan: Look at those hands, ladies. You should have been a pug, Chickie.
Chick Gandil: I did some scrapping. Once, I'm standing there in the ring. My eyes are swollen so bad, I can hardly see. All of a sudden, I bust the guy with an uppercut, he goes down. Somebody stuffs fifty bucks in my hand. Fifty bucks. Now, I'm stepping on something, and it's the other guy's teeth. "What does he get?" I ask. The referee bends over and looks, and says, "From the look of this jaw, he gets the liquid diet for six weeks." Now, what we should've done was waltz around for a few rounds, one of us falls, and we split the fifty dollars even and nobody gets hurt.
Ring Lardner: [Singing in front of the whole team on the train, to the tune of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles"] I'm forever blowing ballgames, pretty ballgames in the air. I come from Chi; I hardly try. Just go to bat, and fade and die. Fortune's coming my way, that's why I don't care. I'm forever blowing ballgames, and the gamblers treat us fairrrrrrr!
Swede Riesberg: [to his teammates]...A crackpot.
[Williams and Felsch confront Gandil before game 7]
Lefty Williams: I thought you were supposed to be in charge of this thing. What happened to Sullivan?
Chick Gandil: He switched hotels, we can't track him down.
Lefty Williams: And what happened to Attell?
Chick Gandil: Shot his wad in the third game when Kerr won; said he's busted.
Happy Felsch: Well, to hell with them, then.
Chick Gandil: You two made an agreement!
Happy Felsch: Hey, we lose one more and it's over. I've dumped four games; I've only been paid for one.
Chick Gandil: Hey, you don't know what these guys are like. [Williams and Felsch grin and walk off] Once you're in, you're in! You can't welch on these guys! [throws his glove to the ground] Your funeral! Assholes...
Swede Riesberg: [Comes walking up] Problems?
Chick Gandil: [Puts on a brave smile] Nah. We still got Eddie.
Hired Killer: You're gonna lose tomorrow.
Lefty Williams: Oh, is that so?
Hired Killer: I know it for a fact. That your wife?
Lefty Williams: Yeah, what's it to you?
Hired Killer: You don't lose tomorrow, she dies.
Lefty Williams: Who sent you?
Hired Killer: You made a promise to certain people.
Lefty Williams: You son of a bitch!
Hired Killer: You can't protect her. If I don't do it, somebody else will. First inning, Mister Williams.

Taglines

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  • The inside story of how one team, for a price, broke all the rules...along with the heart of every kid in the USA.
  • When the cheering stopped, there were...Eight Men Out.
  • 1919. The year America saw major league baseball played a whole new way...underhanded.
  • The Scandal That Rocked A Nation
  • The inside story of how the national pastime became a national scandal.

Cast

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