Classic Baseball Book Review: Eight Men Out and Shoeless Joe

Classic Baseball Book Review: Eight Men Out and Shoeless Joe

By: Megan Lee

I chose to read Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof, and Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. After countless hours of being consumed by the fascinating tales, they have increased my appreciation for baseball. The two have a few resemblances, but mostly differ. The contrast between the authors’ plot, character development, and writing styles is quite prominent, yet their most significant distinction is their relation to the unit topics of this course.

One similarity between the stories is the character, Joe Jackson, and his involvement in the Black Sox scandal. “I was raised on the story of the Black Sox Scandal. I grew up hearing of the eight disgraced ballplayers: Weaver, Cicotte, Risberg, Felsch, Gandil, Williams, McMullin, and Shoeless Joe Jackson.” (Kinsella, “Shoeless Joe”) Both are a classic must-read, yet their most notable resemblance is that the compelling publications develop and enhance your passion for baseball.

Eliot Asinof’s book recounts the experience of eight Chicago White Sox players who collude with the nation’s biggest gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series. He wrote in a journalistic style which incorporated direct and concise sentences such as “On the morning of October 1, 1919, the sun rose in a clear blue sky over the city of Cincinnati.” (Asinof, “Eight Men Out”) The story involves a vast amount of characters and each of them has a brief factual description. For example, “They would watch the great Eddie Cicotte, a pitcher with a season's record of 29 victories against only 7 defeats, who would tease the Reds with his knuckle ball that came dancing unpredictably toward the hitter.” (Asinof, “Eight Men Out”) On the other hand, W.P. Kinsella tells the adventure of a farmer named Ray Kinsella who builds a baseball diamond in hopes of bringing the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson to come play on it. He applied a literary writing...