In just a few more hours, the 2019 MLB regular season will begin when the Mariners’s Ichiro Suzuki tosses out the first pitch of the season.  The Mariners and the A’s will be playing a pair of games in Japan, at the Tokyo Dome.  In America, it will be around four in the morning when that first pitch is thrown so I’ll probably miss it.

Even if I might not be able to watch the opening pitch, I can still watch my favorite baseball movie, Eight Men Out.  Eight Men Out is about the 1919 World Series and how eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of conspiring with gamblers to throw the championship.  While everyone agrees that most of the players were guilty, Eight Men Out suggests that both Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver were wrongly accused and, unlike the other players, should not have been banned from playing in the major leagues.

The final scene of Eight Men Out takes place several years after the scandal.  A group of baseball fans think that they’ve spotted Shoeless Joe playing for a semi-professional team.  While they debate whether or not that’s really Shoeless Joe, Jackson’s old teammate, Buck Weaver, tells them that there will never be another player as great as Joe Jackson.  John Cusack plays Weaver while D.B. Sweeney plays Jackson.

Finally, it’s time for baseball!

GO RANGERS!