Black Sox Scandal - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Eliot Asinof's book Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series is the best-known history of the scandal. Director John Sayles' 1988 film based on Asinof's book is a dramatization of the scandal, focusing largely on Buck Weaver as the one banned player who did not take any money. The 1952 novel The Natural and its 1984 filmed dramatization of the same name were inspired significantly by the events of the scandal.

• W. P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe is the story of an Iowa farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield after hearing a mysterious voice. Later, Shoeless Joe Jackson and other members of the Black Sox come to play on his field. The novel was adapted into the 1989 hit film Field of Dreams. Joe Jackson plays a central role in inspiring protagonist Ray Kinsella to reconcile with his past.

• Harry Stein's novel Hoopla, alternatingly co-narrated by Buck Weaver and Luther Pond, a fictitious New York Daily News columnist, attempts to view the Black Sox Scandal from Weaver's perspective.

• Brendan Boyd's novel Blue Ruin: A Novel of the 1919 World Series offers a first-person narrative of the event from the perspective of Sport Sullivan, a Boston gambler involved in fixing the series.

• In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, a minor character named Meyer Wolfsheim was said to have helped in the Black Sox scandal, though this is purely fictional. In explanatory notes accompanying the novel's 75th anniversary edition, editor Matthew Bruccoli describes the character as being directly based on Arnold Rothstein.

• In Dan Gutman's novel Shoeless Joe & Me, the protagonist, Joe, goes back in time to try to prevent Shoeless Joe from being banned for life.

• In the film The Godfather Part II, the fictional gangster Hyman Roth alludes to the scandal when he says, "I've loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919."

• The HBO series Boardwalk Empire highlights Arnold Rothstein's involvement in the scandal.

• The television series Friday the 13th: The Series featured an episode titled "The Mephisto Ring" about a cursed 1919 World Series ring that killed whoever wore it, allowing its owner to view the future outcome of a sporting event in return for supplying it with victims. The curse was due to the association the ring had with 'past evil', a nod to the gambling syndicate responsible for the scandal.

• The History Channel's Pawn Stars had bought a baseball that was signed from 2 members of the scandal worth $2,000 for $900.