YMMV / Eight Men Out

• Award Snub: Did not receive much recognition from the Academy Awards, not even for categories like Best Adapted Screenplay or acting considerations for David Strathairn (Eddie Cicotte) or Michael Lerner (Rothstein)
• Retroactive Recognition: David Strathairn and Michael Rooker were not well-known actors when this movie came out.
• The Woobie
  • Buck Weaver. He tried to warn anyone he could, he played the series as best he could. But fate places him alongside the players who took the money, and he gets banished from the sport to complete the owners' cover-up. More than Eddie Cicotte — who had a legitimate grievance — Weaver was the one who didn't deserve the punishment.
  • Cicotte himself qualifies as well, despite the fact that he was one of the most central figures in the plot. Unlike some of the other players who readily jumped at the chance to pull a fast one over the league, Cicotte only joined after being screwed out of a substantial bonus for winning 30 games due to being sidelined for several weeks (implied to be intentional) by Charles Comiskey, who was already notorious for underpaying his players. Even though this particular story is considered apocryphal in real life, within the context of the film, it means Eddie arguably was the only one of the players with a legitimate reason to want revenge against the higher-ups.
  • Shoeless Joe Jackson. A simple-minded player who gets picked on by his own teammates for being uneducated and superstitious. He goes along with the plot because he thinks it'll help him fit in with his teammates and doesn't fully understand the repercussions of what he's doing. He has some awareness that he's getting good money from the scheme, but he keeps playing well as though the Sox will win anyway. In Real Life, Jackson was a willing participant in the fix and not naive about it, often changing his story about the level of his participation. He testified under oath in court during a grand jury hearing that he accepted money to throw the 1919 World Series. He also only played well in games that were on the level (not every game was fixed) or in fixed games after the outcome was assured — something which a detailed look at stats confirm. See this link for details. Nevertheless, he was heartbroken when he was banished from baseball for life. Years later, a story got around that Ty Cobb found him working at his liquor store in South Carolina and tried to talk to him. Ty finally asked "Joe, don't you know me?" and Jackson replied. "Oh, Ty, I know you, I didn't think anybody from those days would want to know me!"

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