Did You Know?
Director John Sayles was contractually obligated to a running time under two hours. To inspire the cast to talk fast, he showed them the film City for Conquest. The final cut of the film is 12 seconds under two hours.
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In an early scene, Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) walks by a Chicago storefront with the name Oppenheimer's in the window. In the movie Day One, Strathairn plays Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, the program that eventually developed the atomic bomb.
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Director John Sayles bore such a striking resemblance to newspaper writer Ring Lardner that he played the part himself.
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Opening credits: The scroll of names in the opening credits follows the path of a fly ball.
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The ballpark used to make the film, Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, was converted to a dirt race track and is now known as the 16th Street Speedway.
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A child in the movie utters the famous quote "Say it ain't so, Joe!" In real life, a Chicago reporter was standing close by when a boy said something to the effect of "Say it didn't really happen Joe." In order to make a more emotionally-grabbing news article, the reporter took creative license, and created the "Say it ain't so, Joe!" quote.
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In the final scene, Joe Jackson is playing for a minor league team in New Jersey in 1925. On the outfield wall there is an ad for Harry Kurkjian confections. He was a real merchant that worked in nearby Queens NY during the '20s and '30s.
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The trial actually ends in August of 1921, nearly two years after the fix. The movie makes it seem as if it all took place in the time between the 1919 and 1920 baseball season.
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While on the stand, Sox manager Kid Gleason tells the lawyer that he was a pitcher during his playing days which is true, but he played almost 1600 games as a second baseman which is about 1200 more than he pitched.
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In many scenes players are seen tossing their gloves down on the field near their positions before they head to the dugout. Until the 1950s this was common practice - players would leave their gloves on the field while at bat. Because of the hazards involved - players stepping/tripping on them and batted or thrown balls caroming off in odd directions after hitting them - the leagues requested and then demanded that players take their gloves with them to the dugout. It finally took a rule change banning the practice and imposing fines to get players to stop doing it.
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Ken Berry, who plays a heckler and was the film's baseball coach, was an outfielder for the Chicago White Sox. He was called "The Bandit" because of his ability to take hits away from batters.
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It took well over a decade for John Sayles' script to be turned into a movie. Initially Sayles had envisioned giving himself a minor role in the film as a member of the Chicago White Sox, but by the time filming got underway, he deemed himself "too old" to convincingly portray a ballplayer. Instead, he cast himself as sportswriter Ring Lardner.
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The incident where Comisky gives his players flat champagne as a reward for winning the pennant did happen, though it actually happened after the 1917 season. The White Sox won that World Series, beating the New York Giants.
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Studs Terkel was 75 years old when he played the part of famed Chicago sports writer Hal Fullerton. Fullerton was only 46 years old at the time of the 1919 World Series making Terkel 29 years too old for the part.
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According to some sources, the nickname 'Black Sox' was already in use for the Chicago White Sox long before the World Series fixing scandal. It was a reference to owner Charles Comiskey refusing to launder uniforms himself, forcing the players to do it themselves, which inevitably led to uniforms becoming filthy. Other sources, including Eliot Asimov's book 'Eight Men Out', do not mention the team being referred to as the 'Black Sox' before the scandal, however.
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The byline of a newspaper column glimpsed about an hour and ten minutes into the film ("Do or Die!; Kerr Hurls Against Reds") reads "By John Tintori". Tintori is the film's editor.
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The movie shows Hughie Fullerton and Ring Lardner working together and separately during the games (while they are doing the reporting) to mark down any fishy plays or players. In actuality, it was Christy Mathewson working with Hughie Fullerton on this.
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While playing for the minor league Los Angeles Angels in 1914, one of Fred McMullin's teammates was a journeyman pitcher named "Sleepy" Bill Burns, the same character portrayed in the movie.
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In 1922, a petition signed by 14,000 White Sox fans was delivered to Kenesaw Mountain Landis regarding Buck Weaver being reinstated. Landis denied the request.
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Lefty Williams, one of the eight men out, missed the bulk of the 1918 season serving in the military.
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While much is made about the lack of education of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Swede Risberg dropped out of school after the third grade.
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Chick Gandil met Joseph "Sport" Sullivan while Gandil was a member of the Washington Senators. Sullivan was one of the key members in the scheme to throw the 1919 world series.
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While the film does not touch on how the baseball owners settled on offering the job as commissioner to Kenesaw M. Landis, many baseball historians feel he was given the job considering he ruled in favor of the American and National league when both leagues were sued in court by the Federal League in 1914.
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The 1919 World Series was played under weather conditions that were mostly sunny and unseasonably warm. Those conditions wound up not being properly portrayed as game scenes were filmed in Indiana during the month of November, when the weather was largely overcast, and in one case brutally cold.
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