Eliot Asinof (July 13, 1919 – June 10, 2008) was an American writer of fiction and nonfiction best known for his writing about baseball. His most famous book was Eight Men Out, a nonfiction reconstruction of the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Biography

Asinof was born in Manhattan and lived in and around New York City for much of his life. In his youth, he worked in his family's tailoring business. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1940, then played briefly as a minor-league first baseman in the Philadelphia Phillies' organization. During World War II, Asinof served in the U.S. Army on Adak in the Aleutian Islands. He was married for five years to Jocelyn Brando, an actress who was the sister of Marlon Brando; the marriage ended in divorce in 1955.

Besides playing the game seriously, Asinof wrote extensively about baseball. His 1955 debut novel, Man on Spikes, was based on the experience of a friend, Mickey Rutner who played minor league ball and twelve games in the majors. The work was chosen as one of "the golden dozen" baseball books by noted author Roger Kahn.

Asinof's most famous book, 8 Men Out, painstakingly reconstructed the events of the Black Sox scandal that marred the World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds in the same year that Asinof was born. The book was published in 1963; the film Eight Men Out, co-written by Asinof and director John Sayles, appeared in 1988. Asinof also worked on other projects related to the scandal, including TV documentaries such as the 2001 ESPN Sports Century Flashback: The 1919 Black Sox Scandal and the 2005 The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the 1919 Chicago White Sox for "Throwing" the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1968, Asinof signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.^[1]

Asinof wrote other novels and nonfiction books unrelated to baseball including The Fox is Crazy Too (1976), the story of skyjacker Garrett Brock Trapnell. His career as a scriptwriter was curtailed when he was blacklisted for a time during the 1950s.

References

1. ^ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post

• New York Times obituary, 11 June 2008
• Gould, Stephen Jay. "Eight Men Out The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series." Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2006. Holtzbrinck Publishers, 8 Nov 2007 [1].
• The Internet Movie Database Inc., "Biography for Eliot Asinof." The Internet Movie Database Inc., 2007. The Internet Movie Database Inc., 10 Nov 2007 [2].