A Walk in the Woods

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S W A R T H M O R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I NSeries. When widespread rumors of a fixled to an investigation, the suspected playerswere hauled before a grand jury, wherethey confessed. All were banned from baseballby the team owners and their newlyappointed enforcer, Commissioner KenesawMountain Landis. Neither the gamblerswho ruined the players’ careers northe owners who manipulated the scandalto further enslave their chattels were evermade to account for their actions.Eight Men Out is the definitive book onthe scandal. Asinof’s sympathy lies withthe players—men whose livelihood wascontrolled lock, stock, and jockstrap by theteam owners and who became pawns in abig-money game. Joe Jackson is a particularhero, whereas the venal owners and theirracetrack friends get rough treatment. Anuneducated millhand—and prodigiousslugger—from South Carolina, the vulnerableJackson was first seduced by the conspiratorsand later forced to sign a confessionthat he couldn’t even read. Jacksontried for years to return to baseball, playingat times under assumed names. But theban held, and a promising career was lost.For an author, such a book should besomething to celebrate, but ultimately ittaught Asinof some tough lessons aboutbeing a pawn himself. From the time hefirst became interested in the story, itseemed like the fix was in.The Black Sox story was almostuntouchable even before he tackled it. Asinof’sfirst attempt came in a play he wascommissioned to write for live television in1960, but the production was killed beforeairtime by its sponsor, the DuPont Company.Apparently, then–Commissioner ofBaseball Ford Frick told company and networkexecutives that airing the Black Soxstory would be “bad for baseball.”A New York Times report about Frick’scensorship led to a call from an editor atPutnam’s—and a book contract for Asinof.He set about reading everything that hadbeen written about the scandal and coveredthousands of miles tracking down survivingmembers of the team, many of whomwould not talk about the 1919 WorldSeries. When it was published in 1963,baseball fans embraced Eight Men Out, andit sold steadily—though not spectacularly—inthe years that followed. AsinofBETTMANN/CORBISIN EIGHT MEN OUT,ASINOF’S SYMPATHYLIES WITH THEPLAYERS—MENWHOSE LIVELIHOODSWERE CONTROLLEDLOCK, STOCK, ANDJOCKSTRAP BYTHE TEAM OWNERS.optioned the movie rights several times.But surprisingly for such a dramatic story,no film was made for 25 years.By the mid-1970s, after Asinof had writtena half-dozen other books, he learnedthat David Susskind’s Talent Associateswas readying a show about the Black Soxfor NBC-TV. Because he could not claim acopyright on history—historical events areconsidered to be in the public domain—Asinof says he thought little of theSusskind project until he also learned thatSusskind had told the program’s sponsor,IBM, that Talent Associates owned therights to Eight Men Out.Asinof strenuously objected. He didn’teven own the rights himself, he told IBM;they were then held by a California producer—andcertainly not by David Susskind.To its credit, IBM ordered NBC to stop theproject, whereupon Susskind slapped Asinofwith a $1.75 million lawsuit. It tookmany months—and many thousands ofdollars—to defend himself, but Asinoffinally prevailed. Later, he wrote an angrybook about the Susskind affair, BleedingBetween the Lines (1979).Eight Men Out languished after that, atainted property. The rights returned toAsinof, and he managed to option themagain in the early 1980s for $30,000.“Not only had I not made any moneyon the book,” he says, “but defendingmyself had cost me money and sapped myenergies as a writer. At the time, [the$30,000] was a lot of money—a year’sincome—and it got me out of hock.”But, as Asinof points out, a piece ofwriting is “just like a painting. A paintersells his work for $100, and every guy whoowns it after that sells it for more. Therights I sold for $30,000 ended up beingbought by Orion Pictures for $125,000.”So it’s no surprise that, according toAsinof, his first encounter on the set withindependent filmmaker John Sayles wentlike this:“You’re on the rumor mill, El,” saidSayles. “Everybody in the movie businessASINOF WROTE ABOUT “SHOELESS” JOE JACKSON(LEFT) IN EIGHT MEN OUT, HIS BEST-KNOWNBOOK. FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE PITCHER GEORGEEARNSHAW (RIGHT) THREW BATTING PRACTICE TOSWARTHMORE PLAYERS IN THE LATE 1930S.34
aseball becomes the apotheosis of segregationand race war, with one all-whiteleague and one all-black:All games, then, will be a racial clash.I have a dream, Roomie, of high-flyingspikes, of pitchers decking hitters, ofbody-crashing drama at home plate, ofviolence and rumors of violence.... Baseballwill become the heart and soul ofracist America, bringing in crowdsbeyond the greediest club owner’sdream. The World Series, then, wouldbe a modern reprise of the Civil Waritself. I have a dream, Roomie, where thewrote. “No one ever blamed anyone fortaking the money…. It was a phrase thatcould wear a man down, whittling away athis resistance until the wound was raw, thespirit infected.... It might take a man half alifetime to develop his powers to resist—and less than an hour to sell them out.”Eliot Asinof hasn’t bought in, and hehasn’t sold out. An upper-middle classkid, a top student, a star athlete, he was byhis own admission a “straight arrow.”When he and some friends got caughtpainting a red “S” on a Haverford Collegebuilding on the eve of a football game, heBETTMANN/CORBISHIS BOOKS ARE PEOPLED WITH OUTSIDERS,OUTLAWS, AND OUTCASTS—AND HE DOESN’TMIND IF YOU THINK OF HIM THAT WAY TOO.thinks you’re a troublemaker.”“Why did you hire me, then?”shot backAsinof.“I hired you because of it.”Sayles and Asinof became close friends.Asinof calls Sayles’ film “a reaffirmation.Suddenly, here comes a first-class guy whosurrounds himself with first-class people.He knew what the movie business is like.Making that picture was a lot of fun at atime when I had a tendency to become cynical.”But Asinof’s problems weren’t over. Themovie should have provided a goldenopportunity for the first best-seller of Asinof’s40-year writing career. “But on theday the film opened,” he says, “there wasnot one copy of my book in the City ofNew York,” nor anywhere else in the country.Despite months of advance notice fromAsinof about the movie, his publisher neglectedto bring out a new printing to coincidewith the release of the film.In many of Asinof’s books, you find aspeech or passage that is clearly in theauthor’s voice—usually a cry againsthypocrisy or injustice. In Off-Season, protagonistCagle’s black roommate, Corky,makes an angry “I Have a Dream” speechabout the future of race in America. In thisballplayer’s dream—a nightmare really—bullshit hypocrisy of America’s quest forracial amity will once and for all beabandoned.“Is this you? Your voice in Corky’sspeech?” I asked Asinof. “Do you thinkthat the quest for racial amity is false?”“Yes,” he said quietly. “That’s me. That’sabsolutely me.... Any black will tell youthat—except those who buy in to the whiteworld. The big leaguers now, they’re allbuying in.”“But you have to understand,” he says.“Part of my education as a writer was theimpact of all my lefty friends. In [the1930s], that was respectable, at least untilthe McCarthy period, when they all went tojail or got blacklisted. You identified withthe outsider because that’s what you are—an alienated character in American society.It still exists in my work. In a world of peoplewho buy in, I’m always trying to resist.”Asinof spent the late 1950s in Hollywood,married for a time to Marlon Brando’ssister, but returned to New York in1959. “I got out of LA by luck,” he says. Itreminded me of a passage about the filmindustry from his book Bleeding Between theLines.“Take the money. Take the money.Unquestionably, it was the sine qua non ofsurvival in the entertainment business,” hesays Dean Everett Hunt was almost inshock to find him among the miscreants.But Swarthmore changed him. Hisbooks are peopled with outsiders, outlaws,and outcasts—and he doesn’t mind if youthink of him that way too. He’s the selfstyledninth man out, the uncompromisingtough guy of a professional ballplayer, completewith the “F— ’em all” attitude. Yet inhis work, there’s intelligence and compassion;he celebrates the individual’s abilityto fight life’s battles, to stand in against thehigh, tight fastball.He remembers exactly when the lightwent on in his head—the crucial momentin his education—in a seminar with legendaryProfessor of Economics ClareWilcox.“One night we went to his home for theseminar, and he said, ‘Leave all your stuffhere—we’re going into Philadelphia.’Seven or eight of us drove into Philadelphiato see John Steinbeck’s movie Grapesof Wrath.“Then we came back to his house—itwas close to midnight, but his wife madetea and served cookies—and he spent thenext hour talking about the economics ofGrapes of Wrath. I learned a lot about whatAmerica was like that night.“I’ve never forgotten that,” he saidquietly. TM A R C H 2 0 0 135
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A Walk in the Woods

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