SOURCE: Lardner, Ring, Jr. “Foul Ball.” American Film 13, no. 6 (July-August 1988): 45-9.

In the following essay, Lardner discusses Sayles's Eight Men Out, in which the director plays the role of Lardner's father in the story of the 1919 World Series scandal.

I can sympathize with the problems writer-director John Sayles is facing. He has to make a few hundred extras look like a World Series crowd of thousands. He has to direct actors—whose previous baseball experience has been on a purely amateur level—to look, throw, catch, hit, run, and slide like professional champions. He has to remain in charge of all aspects of the shoot while himself playing a role of some consequence in front of the camera. And he has to face the fact that the accuracy of his impersonation is being watched by the best-qualified living expert on it. For the part in which he has...