Movie and Play Take Spellbinding Looks at Integrity

The California Angels may suspect that they are playing under a curse these days, and manager Cookie Rojas would no doubt find a spot on the roster for anyone who could conjure a magic spell powerful enough to turn his team into a pennant contender.

But such traditional September woes aside, there is not a lot of common ground between the great American pastime and witchcraft.

Nevertheless, I found several parallels between South Coast Repertory’s current knockout production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692, and “Eight Men Out,” director John Sayles’ latest film, about the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal of 1919.

Both are rooted in factual, less-than-gleaming incidents from American history: Miller’s play looks at the paranoiac search for witches under every stone; Sayles’ movie is taken from Eliot Asinof’s 1963 novel about athletes and gamblers who conspired to throw that most American of institutions, the World Series.

Beyond that, both works hone in on that elusive, fragile quality called personal integrity. Both show how easily truth is reduced to an expendable commodity when personal or political agendas come into play.

It is often written about Miller’s 1953 play that it was conceived in reaction to the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ hunt in the 1950s for Communists in the government. But as Times theater writer Sylvie Drake noted in her review of SCR’s production: “It isn’t enough to envision ‘The Crucible’ in the aftermath of McCarthyism. . . .

“ ‘The Crucible’ is profoundly a play . . . about individual conscience. In that sense it is ageless and passionate, its timelessness perennially renewed by the resurrections of zealotry among men, or the threat of them.”

In its final scene, protagonist John Proctor, who has been accused of consorting with witches and has been in solitary imprisonment for months, is told that he need not go to the gallows. His life will be spared, but only if he confesses to the crime he hasn’t committed.

Proctor agonizes with the issue despite the upstanding example of a neighbor who steadfastly refuses to kowtow to the court, even though she too is headed for the noose. Proctor loves his wife and children and doesn’t see much harm in giving the court the confession it wants, even if it is a lie. Which is the greater sin?

The same kinds of issues come up in “Eight Men Out,” albeit in a completely different context.

Because the baseball myth is so deeply embedded in America’s moral fabric--our holy trinity is, after all, mom, baseball and apple pie--the nation was stunned by the discovery that several Chicago White Sox conspired to lose the World Series.

But as Asinof and now Sayles point out, there was more behind the scandal than a group of unprincipled athletes and gamblers. “Eight Men Out” alludes to the way the free enterprise system (represented by miserly team owner Charles Comiskey) can exploit talented individuals (the players) for maximum profits and then cast them aside without so much as a thank you. (The big “bonus” Comiskey promised the Sox upon winning a pennant turned out to be a case of champagne at the victory celebration.)

Sure, there is the sheer greed of first baseman Arnold (Chick) Gandil, who in throwing the series sees nothing beyond the zeroes on the $100 bills he will get. But there is also the pathos of pitcher Eddie Cicotte and left fielder-batting champ Shoeless Joe Jackson. Both were superbly talented men who wholeheartedly loved the game, yet had to contend with broken promises from Comiskey and with the inability to feed their families on the pittance they drew in salaries.

And there is third baseman Buck Weaver, one of the eight drummed out of the game, even though he testified that he played his best (he hit .327 in the series) and never accepted a dollar. He tries to let a grand jury know all that and pleads for a separate hearing, but he is squelched by powers whose only desire is to purge the body baseball of its perceived demons. Weaver was in on the meetings where the scheme was hatched, and to these self-righteous zealots, that is evidence enough.

As Miller himself once wrote about the issues in “The Crucible”: “Nobody wants to be a hero. You go through life giving up parts of yourself--a hope, a dream, an ambition, a belief, a liking, a piece of self-respect. But in every man there is something he cannot give up and still remain himself . . . a thing that is summed up for him by the sound of his own name on his own ears. If he gives that up, he comes a different man, not himself.”

That “thing” which Weaver could not give up was his respect for the game’s integrity. John Proctor, meanwhile, was willing to exchange his reputation for his life. But he stopped short when it became clear that the deputy-governor wanted him to serve as a Judas goat, to lead others to sign false confessions.

Both “The Crucible” and “Eight Men Out” challenge us in the audience to think about how we would act if the mettle of our own personal integrity were tested; how our standards would bear up during the stresses of wartime, under the harsh floodlights of a Senate investigative committee, or at the 7-Eleven when the cashier gives you too much change.

Who would have the courage to resist temptation if presented with a real opportunity to bilk the government for millions of dollars on a defense contract scam? Would you notify the Internal Revenue Service if it sent you a refund check for more than it owed you? Or return a company ballpoint pen that mysteriously turned up at home?

Those are the questions that hit harder than any .300 batter and are more potent than any witches’ brew.