Cicotte was nearing the milestone when Comiskey ordered team manager Kid Gleason to bench him for two weeks (missing five starts) with the excuse that the 35-year-old veteran's arm needed a rest before the series.
When the best-of-nine World Series begins, Cicotte deliberately hits Reds leadoff hitter Morrie Rath in the back in Game 1 with his second pitch, a prearranged signal to gangster Arnold Rothstein that the fix is in.
Chicago journalists Ring Lardner and Hugh Fullerton grow increasingly suspicious, while Gleason continues to hear rumors of a fix, but he remains confident that his boys will come through in the end.
Other teammates, such as catcher Ray Schalk and second baseman Eddie Collins, play hard, while Weaver and Jackson show no signs of taking a dive.
Unpaid by the gamblers, Williams also intends to win, but when his wife's life is threatened, he purposely pitches so badly that he is quickly relieved by "Big Bill" James in the first inning.
However, newly appointed commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis bans all eight men for life because they either intentionally lost games or knew about the fix and did not report it to team officials (as Weaver did).
When asked point-blank if the player is indeed Jackson, Weaver denies it, protecting his former teammate by telling the fans "those guys are gone now", solemnly reminiscing about the series.
Talking about his thoughts for the cast when he first wrote the script, Sayles said "my original dream team had Martin Sheen at third base, and I ended up with Charlie in center field.
"[4] During the late summer and early fall of 1987, news media in Indianapolis reported sightings of the film's actors, including Sheen and Cusack.
Lardner stated, "The producers offer free entertainment, Bingo with cash prizes, and as much of a stipend ($20 a day) as the budget permits..."[7] Several people involved in the film would go on to work on Ken Burns's 1994 miniseries Baseball.
The site's critics consensus reads, "Perhaps less than absorbing for non-baseball fans, but nevertheless underpinned by strong performances from the cast and John Sayles' solid direction.
The most compelling figures here are pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), a man nearing the end of his career who feels the twin needs to ensure a financial future for his family and take revenge on his boss, and Buck Weaver (John Cusack), an innocent enthusiast who took no cash for the fix but, like the others, was forever banned from baseball.
"[12] Film critic Roger Ebert was underwhelmed, writing, "Eight Men Out is an oddly unfocused movie made of earth tones, sidelong glances and eliptic[sic] conversations.
"[14] In an overall positive review, critic Janet Maslin spoke well of the actors, writing, "Notable in the large and excellent cast of Eight Men Out are D. B. Sweeney, who gives Shoeless Joe Jackson the slow, voluptuous Southern naivete of the young Elvis; Michael Lerner, who plays the formidable gangster Arnold Rothstein with the quietest aplomb; Gordon Clapp as the team's firecracker of a catcher; John Mahoney as the worried manager who senses much more about his players' plans than he would like to, and Michael Rooker as the quintessential bad apple.
The story's delightfully colorful villains are played by Christopher Lloyd and Richard Edson (as the halfway-comic duo who make the first assault on the players), Michael Mantell as the chief gangster's extremely undependable right-hand man, and Kevin Tighe as the Bostonian smoothie who coolly declares: 'You know what you feed a dray horse in the morning if you want a day's work out of him?
For Mr. Sayles, whose idealism has never been more affecting or apparent than it is in this story of boyish enthusiasm gone bad in an all too grown-up world, Eight Men Out represents a home run.