Do you know how it feels to make the least amount ofmoney of those doing your job? Not to be able to feed your family or buy thethings you want or even need? The 1919 White Sox did.

The league wasmaking big changes, expanding, paying players more and attracting more fans -every team except the Chicago White Sox. Their best pitcher, Eddie Cicotte, wasmaking $6,000 a year while players with half his stature made twice as much.

Cicotte, along with seven other players, agreed to throw the WorldSeries, which they were highly favored to win, for $100,000 to split among them.Today, that would barely get a player to come to the ballpark, let alone throw aWorld Series.

This book is a historical account of how the fix gotstarted, the series and the years to follow. I enjoyed it because it explains howdesperate the players were. Most people just thought they were greedy, but inreality they needed the money to feed their families.

As a baseballplayer, I know how hard it is to hit a 100-mile-per-hour fast ball and makediving catches. I also realize that their small salaries were not enough to playover 100 games a year and risk their health and possibly even their lives. EightMen Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series does a magnificent job ofexplaining this.

I give this book four out of five stars. However, I wouldnot recommend this book to anyone who is not seriously into baseball because itis a pretty difficult read. But if you like baseball or enjoy reading historicalnonfiction, this book is for you.