You know you've written a good book when people are still talking about it 60 years later.
Six decades after it was first published, Eight Men Out remains the most popular account of the 1919 White Sox throwing the World Series. It's not hard to see why. Asinof's prose is brilliant, deftly conveying a sense of the character of the men involved against the cultural backdrop of post-WWI America and all of its contradictions. Unlike so many other baseball historians, Asinof uses statistics strategically and sparingly, and refrains from hero worship at all costs. The men described here are flawed and human, and there are really no good guys or bad guys - though Rothstein surely feels like Mephistopheles.
The greatest testament of the success of this book is its continued popularity despite its obvious flaws. It's no secret that Asinof fudged things a little bit here and there to help push the story along. He also apparently possesses the uncanny ability to enter the thoughts of long-deceased historical figures. Some have termed this book "historical fiction" as a result - though, in all honesty, the story is too complex and there are too many characters to fit this book into that category.
What is absolutely clear is that this is the best baseball book written before Lawrence Ritter's famous interviews. Asinof may have gotten a few details wrong here and there, but he also got quite a bit right, and demonstrates a deep understanding of contemporary newspaper articles, court documents and the culture of the sport in a very different era. He might not care for footnotes (the historian's crutch), but there is no doubt that he has done his research and knows his subject matter intimately.
When your book inspires dozens of historians to prove you wrong, you know you've done something right.
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 18, 2020
"Gentlemen, they went to see a ballgame. But all they saw was a con game."---States Attorney Gorman to the jury
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Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 23, 2015
