Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty

Since the release of "Eight Men Out," the movie, Asinov's book has taken some dings in terms of being the accepted authoritative account of the Black Sox scandal, mainly in light of research done by SABR and other authors.

It seems Asinov fluffed a few dates, comoposited some incidents and characters, and of course the source material accounts from the players involved conflicted on several points.

It's still probably the most comprehensive single roundup of the whole deal, but it's only the starting point from which a lot of additional reading is necessary to get a handle on it.

And the movie, while it was pretty faithful to the book, did make some fairly major changes in the storyline. Most egregious, the movie depicts the news of the scandal leaking out over the 1919-20 offseason, with the trial taking place apparently before spring training the next year.

In reality the scandal bubbled along on the back burners through the entire 1920 season, finally busting into the headlines in the last two or three weeks of the season as the Yankees, Indians and White Sox all stormed down the stretch for the pennant.

The only real public indication something really strange was going on was the fact that Chick Gandil, agreed by virtually all sources as the main mover among the players, quite unexpectedly failed to sign a contract and show up for camp in the spring of 1920.

Gandil was 31, had no known injuries, and had had his best season in five years in 1919 so it would have seemed quite curious why he would abruptly decide to retire.

 

The scene where Comiskey screwed Cicotte out of his $10,000 bonus for winning "only" 29 games actually happened in 1917 (when he won 28), according to the book, and actually never happened at all. Comiskey did have a few $300 and $500 bonuses available to some players, but nothing that would be double a player's salary. And Cicotte DID pitch a potential pennant clincher on Sept. 24 that would have been his 30th victory. But he was pulled with the team down 5-4 in a game they would rally to win 6-5.

Movie made it look like a driving force in Eddie's decision to go bad.

 

In the movie Joe Jackson bats right and throws left, while Jackson batted left and threw righty. Kind of a massive mistake there.

 

While Straithairn did do a real good acting job as Cicotte in 8MO, he didn't look very much like the real guy at all.

While Straithairn is famously drawn and gaunt, the real Cicotte was kinda square-faced and stocky (5-9, 185). Actually Liotta probably would have looked more like him.

The best casting job in that movie was undeniably director John Sayles, who cast himself as Ring Lardner, an absolute dead ringer (groan).

 

Back to Winning Time: the season wraps up Sunday, with no more Bird-Magic interaction likely to appear. So I guess that's waiting for Season 2.

 

You're thinking Field of Dreams. DB Sweeney played Jackson in Eight Men Out and batted left in that movie.

 

And was dead-on perfect as Joe. As was John Cusack as Buck Weaver and John Mahoney as Kid Gleason and Charlie Sheen as Happy Felsch and Michael Rooker as Gandil. In fact I think the casting for 8 Men Out is nearly perfect throughout, except for Gordon Clapp as Ray Schalk, can't picture that, he's no catcher.

 

Don’t forget Michael Lerner, Christopher Lloyd and Studs Turkel

 

There's a famous (for Magic fans) line Musburger delivered at the end of Game 6 of the '80 Finals. "And the Most Valuable Player is Magic Johnson. 42 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists. He starts at center, plays forward and guard and leads the Lakers to a World Championship 123-107 over Philadelphia, without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar." It's a clip played in many a Magic highlight mix and video.

But seconds later comes another Musburger line that belongs in a museum. "And the Lakers have announced that they'll have a victory rally at noon tomorrow in the parking lot of The Forum."

Forget championship parades snaking through cities, attended by tens of thousands. Back in the day you had a rally that resembled something put on by a town of 700 welcoming back their state basketball champs.

Looking forward to the Winning Time spin on that game in the season finale. Imagining a graphic popping up at the buzzer screaming "42 points, 15 rebounds, 7 assists, 69 blowjobs later that night!" while Magic stares into the camera and winks.

When Buss did get rid of McKinney, he had some amazing quotes, such as:

"He is an absolutely adequate coach, but under the circumstances it wouldn't be a lot of fun. The decision I made was based on having a hell of a lot of fun."

 

I may have been at that rally. I remember going to a gathering at The Forum, but don't recall which year. They were having a parade by 1987, because that's when Pat Riley guaranteed a repeat.

 

I wonder if they’ll mention CBS aired Game 6 on tape delay at 11:30

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/30/sports/see-you-later-when-nba-finals-were-not-broadcast-live/