I have read several of his books, including "Seven Days To Sunday", although not "Eight Men Out," but I did see the movie, and I thought it was pretty good.

R.I.P.

His parents met, Martin Asinof said, when his father was dating Rita Moreno, and the Brando siblings—who were starring in separate productions on Broadway at the time—joined them for dinner. Moreno and Marlon Brando left together, and the other two became smitten with each other.

Wow. Swapping out Rita Moreno to Brando for his sister is pretty hot.

I didn't know he wrote for Maverick.

I heard Asinof talk last year about his career. He was scathing about just about everyone he'd ever worked with, especially Jim Bouton. Asinof had a kind of Swiftian indignation about the idiocy and venality of the universe: not just baseball but the film world and the literary business. It comes across in Man on Spikes, an excellent novel where the hero, a career minor-leaguer, gets screwed by the system in every way possible; and of course in Eight Men Out, which was the most important work in humanizing the Black Sox, who till then had been pariahs. Asinof portrayed the Black Sox as themselves screwed by the system – no angels, certainly, but understandable men.

One of the few books I've read at least twice - I rented the movie and watched it for the first time immediately after reading the book and thought the movie stayed very faithful to the script, which is what I liked most about it. An amazing, compelling story. Well done and thank you Mr. Asinof! R I P

Bob, I knew that Asinoff and Bouton collaborated on a book. I didn't know that they were on the outs after that.

I also wasn't aware that Asinoff changed the perception of the Black Sox.

GGC, it's a complicated history best told by Dan Nathan in the book Saying It's So. But in large terms, until Eight Men Out, the public image of the Black Sox was one of unforgivable sinners: it resonates throughout pulp stories and sportswriting of the mid-20th-century. There were a few dissenters, like Nelson Algren, but little public sympathy for the fixers themselves. After Eight Men Out, Comiskey became the villain of the piece, which prepared the way for largely sympathetic treatments of the banned players, as in Shoeless Joe / Field of Dreams.

Asinof's story about Strike Zone was that he and Bouton were supposed to write alternating chapters – Bouton in the voice of a pitcher, Asinof in the voice of an umpire. Bouton was (said Asinof!) chronically late with his material, and it was inept when it reached the editor. Asinof claimed to have rewritten the entire book himself. He hated Strike Zone, thought it was garbage, resented the need to tack Bouton's name onto it for sales purposes. I kind of liked Strike Zone, and told Asinof so, but he sneered at the idea ...

GGC, it's a complicated history best told by Dan Nathan in the book Saying It's So. But in large terms, until Eight Men Out, the public image of the Black Sox was one of unforgivable sinners:

One thing that interests me is how different playeres are treated in the media over the years. (Not just the Black Sox, but the Cobb vs Ruth debate or how Stan Musial's star has seemed to slip since his playing days.) Thanks for the background.

I tried to read Strike Zone once, but most likely found something more interesting during that library trip.

GGC, give Strike Zone another shot. I read it a while back, and found it fascinating. I found the umpire chapters better written and more compelling. I had just assumed that is was because Asinof was a better writer, but I guess there was more to it. I'll have to look for Man on Spikes. I'm sorry to hear that Asinof was so bitter about his life and work.

I flipped thorugh a liitle of Seven Days To Sunday once. It was like an earlier version of Jerry Izenberg's No Medals For Trying.

I've never forgotten Asinof's description of Giants wide receiver Homer Jones (legendarily fast with big hands)in Seven Days to Sunday: "a man on a motorcycle with a butterfly net."

I met Asinof at the 1989 SABR national in Albany, where he signed my tattered paperback copy of Eight Men Out. This copy was eventually "borrowed" by a psycho ex-roommate, so I bought another copy last year, sent it to Asinof with a SASE envelope and he autographed THAT for me. I'm glad I made the effort.

At the SABR event, Asinof claimed that when he was working on 8MO, the few surviving Sox wouldn't talk to him because they were still afraid of organized crime retaliation 40+ years later. After the book came out, I believe Chick Gandil and Eddie Cicotte met with him.

Two other Asinof books worth tracking down: Bleeding Between the Lines, essentially a making-of-Eight-Men-Out memoir, and 1919, where Asinof puts the Series fix in the context of post-WWI America (i.e. Red scare, Prohibition).

Man on Spikes is absolutely one of the great baseball novels. Its Christ-figure motif is a smidge overt, which may date it slightly, but it's still a must read for anyone interested in serious sports fiction.

I used to talk to John Sayles around the time he was researching “Eight Men Out”...but I was in the middle of a 20-year alchy swash so I don't remember anything.

Sorry.

Eliot Asinof's Minor League Stats

Eight Men Out and The Glory of Their Times are probably the last two "great" baseball books written before the advent of the National Baseball Library -- rereading 8MO today, I'm struck by the dialogue scenes (which Asinof admitted he invented) and the absence of anything resembling footnotes or bibliography. Given that every Black Sox book since 1963 has used Asinof as a primary source, it's discouraging we never really know what his primary sources were.

The Sayles movie is actually quite good, though it's disturbing that the fix is seemingly revealed to the public five minutes after the 1919 Series ends, instead of almost an entire year later, when the 1920 Sox were in the last stages of an incredible AL pennant race.

The performances are strong; Charlie Sheen somehow manages to pull off playing a randy, amoral character...