Maybe it ain't so...

September 8, 2009 2:07 PM

Did "Shoeless" Joe Jackson help the 1919 "Black Sox" baseball team throw the World Series? The book Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof seems to say he did. While Eight Men Out is a fictional book, it has served as the basis of many people's understanding of the Black Sox events. However, Asinof's papers, containing research related to writing the book, include fictional resources cited as being real and an overstatement of the importance of resources that actually existed. More importantly, the notes shed new light on the involvement of "Shoeless" Joe himself.
posted by elder18 (56 comments total)

and here I thought it was all Ray Liotta's fault
posted by mannequito at 2:10 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Say it ain't so, Asinof.
posted by box at 2:12 PM on September 8, 2009 [3 favorites]

man, the book must be different from the movie. IIRC, the movie made it out like shoeless joe and cusack's character were just poor saps who got dragged along despite trying their best to play honestly.
posted by shmegegge at 2:17 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Huh? I have read Eight Men Out. It is not very damning of Jackson, and indeed leaves open the possibility that he was approached and aware of the conspiracy but chose to ignore it.

Ken Burns also covered it quite even-handedly in his Baseball mini-series.
posted by rokusan at 2:19 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Is that why his ghost is stuck haunting that cornfield?
posted by Sys Rq at 2:20 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'd love to see this backed up with some sort of data. Even a survey.

Even today, almost a century later, there is no scene more often associated with the dark side of professional sports than that of a young boy pulling on the trousers of “Shoeless” Joe as he left the grand jury proceedings in Chicago.

From the CLM article, presumably from a writer who's been in a cave for the entire Steroid Era.
posted by rokusan at 2:24 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Even today, almost a century later, there is no scene more often associated with the dark side of professional sports than that of a young boy pulling on the trousers of “Shoeless” Joe as he left the grand jury proceedings in Chicago.

Yeah - I have to call bullshit on that, too, rokusan. The first picture that came into my mind related to the dark side of professional sports was Mike Tyson spitting out a hunk of ear. Also standing next to Mark McGwire in an elevator and noting that his forarms were thicker than my thighs, his coat and mane was shiny and glossy, and he kind of whinnied when he breathed.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:34 PM on September 8, 2009 [7 favorites]

jesus, it is murder trying to read stuff written by lawyers. intelligent people writing like junior high kids.

revealing article, though.
posted by shmegegge at 2:34 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

> While Eight Men Out is a fictional book,

What the hell are you talking about? It's a work of baseball history. He doubtless got some things wrong, as do all histories, but that doesn't make it "a fictional book."

And, like rokusan, I read the book and did not come away from it thinking that Jackson helped throw the Series.
posted by languagehat at 2:35 PM on September 8, 2009

It's Raining Florence Henderson: "Also standing next to Mark McGwire in an elevator and noting that his forarms were thicker than my thighs, his coat and mane was shiny and glossy, and he kind of whinnied when he breathed."

don't even get me started on when he threw the kentucky derby. fucker cost me a grand.
posted by shmegegge at 2:35 PM on September 8, 2009 [4 favorites]

"The first picture that came into my mind related to the dark side of professional sports was..."

If the rest of that sentence doesn't include "OJ" and/or "Ford Bronco" it wasn't worth typing.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 2:40 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

I thought of that, too, Crash, but passed because it wasn't necessarily related to sport as much as celebrity.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:44 PM on September 8, 2009

The first picture that came into my mind related to the dark side of professional sports was...

That time Darth Vader pitched a two-hitter for the Kansas city Royals.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:45 PM on September 8, 2009 [16 favorites]

Rumors of a fix circulated before, during, and after the 1919 series, but the White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey, chose not to investigate them. Prompted by concerns of several journalists and baseball executives, a grand jury investigated allegations over a fixed 1920 season game, which eventually led to investigation of the 1919 series and the indictment of the eight players. None of the gamblers, such as the notorious Arnold Rothstein, who organized the fix, were charged with a crime, however, partly because documents were stolen and bribes paid.

Five of the players—infielders Arnold "Chick" Gandil and Charles "Swede" Risberg, outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch, and pitchers Ed Cicotte and Claude "Lefty" Williams—were guilty of throwing the five games. Fred McMullin only batted twice in the series, and infielder Buck Weaver's only crime was remaining silent about the fix. The part played by the great hitter "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, who was illiterate, has been debated ever since.
posted by Postroad at 2:47 PM on September 8, 2009

If you read the article, it says that Asinof fictionalized parts of the book on purpose so that people couldn't make a screenplay out of it without his permission. So, in a sense, it's not entirely non-fiction.

What the article talks about is how some of the "factual" stuff claimed in the book might not be supported by his research.
posted by elder18 at 2:47 PM on September 8, 2009

That time Darth Vader pitched a two-hitter for the Kansas city Royals.

"You don't know the power of the dark slider!"
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:47 PM on September 8, 2009 [6 favorites]

And yes, the "say it ain't so, Joe" thing, while almost surely apocryphal, is the iconic image of the corruption of what was at the time America's pastime.

The "Black Sox" scandal was a betrayal of the faith of the nation at the highest level of the game, magnitudes of order above any individual decision to take drugs, or any crime committed off the field.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:48 PM on September 8, 2009

languagehat: "He doubtless got some things wrong, as do all histories, but that doesn't make it "a fictional book.""

in the article, the accusation made by the authors is that Asinof fabricated much of what he wrote, and that his notes provide no substantive evidence for many of the things included in the book. of particularly damning evidence are notes he wrote that are simply handwritten copies of articles from back in the day whose accuracy is also highly questionable. he includes quotes from a source (Harry F) who appears in the book and who Asinof later admitted was an invention of his own (along with one other unnamed character) in order to prevent screenwriters from copying his book without paying him royalties by saying they relied on the public record. notes from interviews he conducted with white sox players directly contradict allegations he made in the book, and in particular none of the claims he makes against joe jackson are actually supported by evidence of any kind in his notes. lastly, it would seem that his claims about comiskey's miserliness are probably fictional, too. apparently the white sox were the highest paid team in baseball at the time.
posted by shmegegge at 2:49 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Also, Jonathan Coulton wrote a song about the whole thing.
posted by NoraReed at 2:49 PM on September 8, 2009 [7 favorites]

The author of that article seems to think that "fiction writing" and "inaccurate writing about historical fact" are synonyms. They are not.

Also, the reason most people think that Shoeless Joe Jackson was implicated in the game-throwing was that he was found guilty by Judge Landis and banned from baseball, not because Eliot Asinof wrote an inaccurate book. (As others have said, Asinof portrays Jackson much more sympathetically, in my opinion as someone who has read the book, than the author of the article suggests.)

Landis may well have been wrong, or railroading Jackson because of owners' agendas, but that's a completely different question than the accuracy of Asinof's book.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:01 PM on September 8, 2009 [3 favorites]

in truth, this makes me wonder if something like this is possible any more.

maybe Asinof lucked onto the last moment in recorded history where you could still write about it 40 years later, write the definitive history without supporting evidence, claim you had super secret documentation from interviews with involved people and die without anyone questioning your claims or discovering your fraud.

nowadays everything you could write about would either have extensive publicly available historical documentation or the internet would happily call you on your bullshit, James Frey style.
posted by shmegegge at 3:02 PM on September 8, 2009

> the accusation made by the authors is that Asinof fabricated much of what he wrote

So? Calling the book "fictional" because of their accusations is like calling the entire labor movement Communist because of Joe McCarthy. Trying to maintain a shred of objectivity and common sense is usually helpful. Or what Sidhedevil said.
posted by languagehat at 3:10 PM on September 8, 2009

Well, while people think Shoeless Joe was guilty because someone said he was and he was banned, how that is represented later on, through book and movie, determines how people feel about that person being found guilty.
posted by elder18 at 3:12 PM on September 8, 2009

I should say that I'm perfectly willing to believe the article's claims that Asinof makes lots of false and inaccurate statements in his book. But that doesn't make it "fiction"--it makes it bad, dishonest history.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:13 PM on September 8, 2009

That time Darth Vader pitched a two-hitter for the Kansas city Royals.

"You don't know the power of the dark slider!"

James Earl Jones was in both Star Wars and Field of Dreams. COINCIDENCE?
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:14 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

Regardless of whether Shoeless Joe actually helped throw the World Series, he admitted that he accepted a bribe on the understanding that he would help cause the team to lose. Once a player does that, he is owed very little benefit of the doubt. But I agree that he shouldn't be lumped into the same category as others who admitted trying to throw games, especially given his high level of performance in the Series.
posted by brain_drain at 3:15 PM on September 8, 2009

These are not the 'roids you are looking for.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:15 PM on September 8, 2009 [6 favorites]

how that is represented later on, through book and movie, determines how people feel about that person being found guilty

And the Eight Men Out movie sparked a tremendous interest in the "rehabilitate Shoeless Joe Jackson" movement, because it portrayed Jackson as a victim of circumstance, not as a venal cheater.

So there's a bit of a paradox here. The very thing that made Jackson a sympathetic figure to many people--Asinof's book and the movie--are being castigated as taking the chief responsibility for Jackson's bad rap.

Without Asinof's book and Sayles's movie (and, to a lesser extent, W.P. Kinsella's very good novel Shoeless Joe), Shoeless Joe Jackson wouldn't be the hard-done-by hero he is to many people today.

This doesn't excuse Asinof's bad-faith writing of history. It's just a bit Terminator-y; if we could go back in time and get Asinof to write an honest book, or never to have written the book at all, would people care about Jackson's getting a bum deal?
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:18 PM on September 8, 2009 [3 favorites]

That time Darth Vader pitched a two-hitter for the Kansas City Royals.

Roger Clemmens never played for the Royals. That must be a fictional post.
posted by chrchr at 3:38 PM on September 8, 2009

"James Earl Jones was in both Star Wars and Field of Dreams. COINCIDENCE?"

"If you build it, the rebels will come…"
posted by klangklangston at 3:39 PM on September 8, 2009

That's a Sayles movie? I guess I'll watch it after all.
posted by small_ruminant at 3:49 PM on September 8, 2009

Well I was gonna come in here and mention that it would be great if someone would produce the Grand Jury notes, but sheesh.
posted by Ron Thanagar at 4:00 PM on September 8, 2009

It's a fictional book? Like the Necronomicon?
posted by Pronoiac at 4:29 PM on September 8, 2009

What interests me as an aside is the notion that we have history, then we have (more recent) the idea that a writer of fiction can use history to write a novel about and around historical fact, and that the novel can sometimes then become a film (with, perhaps, further changes) and possibly even viewed in or or another form on tv, and thus in our lazy way we "understand" a historical incident via fiction and film.
posted by Postroad at 4:41 PM on September 8, 2009

Selected Court Documents
Form Letter
posted by robot at 5:05 PM on September 8, 2009

elder18 - Are you by chance a SABR member? This topic has been floating around on the SABR-L list recently with some really interesting discussion. It seems the opinion is that while he may not have been part of it, he knew of it, which renders him complicit.
posted by xmutex at 5:38 PM on September 8, 2009

In 8 games Jackson batted .375, scored 5 runs, batted in 6 and had a slugging percentage of .563

He didn't throw shit.
posted by zzazazz at 5:45 PM on September 8, 2009

In 8 games Jackson batted .375, scored 5 runs, batted in 6 and had a slugging percentage of .563

Offensive stats don't mean a thing if you're letting the other team take as many runs as they want.
posted by muddgirl at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2009

Dammit, IRFH. You beat me to it.
posted by joe lisboa at 6:28 PM on September 8, 2009

It seems the opinion is that while he may not have been part of it, he knew of it, which renders him complicit.

I don't see how that's an "opinion"--he stated that very clearly to the Grand Jury.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:28 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

In 8 games Jackson batted .375, scored 5 runs, batted in 6 and had a slugging percentage of .563

He didn't throw shit.

Baloney. He knew about the plot; the fact that he did not tell his manager "Hey, you might not want to start Cicotte et al, because they're planning on throwing the series for money" means that he threw the series, regardless of his stats.

The fact that he took money for it is, of course, damning as well, but he threw the series even if he batted a thousand and didn't take a dime.
posted by Flunkie at 7:00 PM on September 8, 2009

And by the way, nearly half of those runs scored and exactly half of those runs batted in came in a single game, which was a blowout loss.

One run and one RBI (solo homer) in the third inning, while trailing five to nothing.

Another run and two more RBIs in the eighth -- the eighth -- while losing ten to one.
posted by Flunkie at 7:27 PM on September 8, 2009

Another run and two more RBIs in the eighth -- the eighth -- while losing ten to one.

The A-Rod of his generation.
posted by rokusan at 7:45 PM on September 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

I believe Shoeless Joe.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:17 PM on September 8, 2009

languagehat: "> the accusation made by the authors is that Asinof fabricated much of what he wrote

So? Calling the book "fictional" because of their accusations is like calling the entire labor movement Communist because of Joe McCarthy. Trying to maintain a shred of objectivity and common sense is usually helpful. Or what Sidhedevil said."

I think where we disagree is on how we perceive Asinof's errors. to call what he wrote "inaccurate" is technically true, but to my mind also euphemistic. to call what he wrote "fiction" is closer to the truth, imho, because he intentionally lied. if what's in the article is accurate, nearly every piece of new information that has since been considered definitive turns out to have been either a complete fabrication, a revision of hearsay, or a contradiction of his own research. to my mind that crosses from historic writing to fiction. I wouldn't call it a novel, I'd just call it fictional. there isn't actual history in the history book.

in truth, though, we're arguing over how two lawyers phrased something, which is like arguing over the artistic merit of a crayon drawing on a refrigerator. in other words, yes these guys write very poorly.
posted by shmegegge at 8:35 AM on September 9, 2009

Flunkie: "And by the way, nearly half of those runs scored and exactly half of those runs batted in came in a single game, which was a blowout loss.

One run and one RBI (solo homer) in the third inning, while trailing five to nothing.

Another run and two more RBIs in the eighth -- the eighth -- while losing ten to one."

I'm having difficulty understanding the implication of the statistics you're mentioning here. are you saying that he must have been actively playing poorly in the rest of the games of the series? as near as I can figure, the stats you're quoting make it sound like despite him trying his best, he could not single handedly overcome the efforts of his teammates who WERE playing poorly on purpose.
posted by shmegegge at 8:37 AM on September 9, 2009

>... to call what he wrote "inaccurate" is technically true, but to my mind also euphemistic. to call what he wrote "fiction" is closer to the truth, imho, because he intentionally lied.

No, "fiction" implies that it was never intended to be taken as true, which is even worse.

What do we call a mix of truth and intentional lies? A trash-up?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:15 AM on September 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'm having difficulty understanding the implication of the statistics you're mentioning here. are you saying that he must have been actively playing poorly in the rest of the games of the series? as near as I can figure, the stats you're quoting make it sound like despite him trying his best, he could not single handedly overcome the efforts of his teammates who WERE playing poorly on purpose.

One of the ways to keep throwing a game from being too obvious is to rack up good statistics by giving full effort in blowouts and then dragging your feet, committing errors, and missing the ball when it's close. That way, if someone suggests you're fixing the result, you can point to your .375 average and RBI total. Hal Chase (the quintessential corrupt ballplayer) was infamous for this sort of thing.

A related technique for intentionally blowng plays in the field is to wait a second longer than you need to and then give full effort, so that you're always diving for balls you barely miss. You look great and, again, no one questions your integrity.
posted by Copronymus at 10:11 AM on September 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Basically what Copronymous said. I'm not claiming he wasn't trying otherwise, but "performed very well as soon as his team had virtually no chance to win" is not necessarily indicative of "didn't throw the series". It could just as easily indicate "saw a chance to pad his personal stats without substantially affecting the overall goal of losing the series". And frankly, since he took money to lose the series, I don't see why we should give him the benefit of the doubt on this.

And since his personal stats are often brought up to dispute the claim that he threw the series, this is relevant.

Given actual historical data, the chance of a team winning a game, rounded to the nearest percent, given that they are currently losing ten to one in the bottom of the eighth, is zero. I'm not kidding - it's literally zero.

Then Jackson knocked in two and scored himself. Improving his team's chance of winning, rounded to the nearest percent, from zero to... zero. Again, I am not kidding.

Jackson probably didn't know this exactly. But he sure as hell knew that his team was almost certainly going to lose, no matter whether he tried in this situation or not. So why not try to pad his personal stats a little?
posted by Flunkie at 10:55 AM on September 9, 2009

Copronymus: "One of the ways to keep throwing a game from being too obvious is to rack up good statistics by giving full effort in blowouts and then dragging your feet, committing errors, and missing the ball when it's close."

bearing in mind that jackson committed no errors during the entire series, how would he have been dragging his feet otherwise? if he hit better that series than he did in the rest of his career, and committed no errors on the field, what would he have done to throw the game?
posted by shmegegge at 1:44 PM on September 9, 2009

Are you seriously claiming that you can't imagine any way in baseball to "drag your feet" other than doing something that the official scorer officially says is an "error"?
posted by Flunkie at 2:54 PM on September 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

to call what he wrote "inaccurate" is technically true, but to my mind also euphemistic. to call what he wrote "fiction" is closer to the truth, imho, because he intentionally lied.

"Lies" and "fiction" are not the same when it comes to the written word. You may call Asinof's book "inaccurate history" or "history full of lies" or "purposefully falsified history" but it is not fiction.

Fiction, when one is discussing prose, refers specifically to made-up stories that are presented as made-up stories. In other contexts, people sometimes use "fiction" to mean "falsehood", but when we are talking about books we don't do that.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:24 PM on September 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Flunkie: "Are you seriously claiming that you can't imagine any way in baseball to "drag your feet" other than doing something that the official scorer officially says is an "error"?"

I guess I'm just saying "okay, how DID he throw the game?" I'm not really trying to be contentious, I'm really sincerely asking.
posted by shmegegge at 8:28 AM on September 10, 2009

Sidhedevil: "Fiction, when one is discussing prose, refers specifically to made-up stories that are presented as made-up stories."

yeah, you're right. I guess I can still see why someone would, through a lack of precision, use "fiction" as a replacement for "history book full of lies." but you are right.
posted by shmegegge at 8:29 AM on September 10, 2009

I guess I'm just saying "okay, how DID he throw the game?"

It's not a question of "Did Shoeless Joe Jackson's actions contribute to losing the game?" It's undeniable that he and his team took the money to lose the game. It's undeniable that they then lost the game. Even if every single member of the team had played their hearts out and just happened to lose (which didn't happen, according to the box scores), they would still be guilty of corruption.
posted by muddgirl at 10:41 AM on September 10, 2009

I guess I'm just saying "okay, how DID he throw the game?" I'm not really trying to be contentious, I'm really sincerely asking.

1. Took money to throw the series.
2. Did not tell his manager that there was a plot to throw the series, and that his manager therefore shouldn't play the people involved in the plot.

As I said above, given these facts, he could've batted a thousand, and he still threw the series.

But if you're merely looking for actual play-related things, who knows. Nobody here saw the games. There are quite obviously any number of ways that he could have, though.

But more to the point: I didn't bring up the "performed well in a blowout loss" point (which is what you originally were asking about) as evidence that he threw the series.

Rather, I brought it up to counter the claim that his overall good stats were necessarily indicative that he did not throw the series.
posted by Flunkie at 12:24 AM on September 11, 2009 [1 favorite]