In Passing

Bethesda, Md.

Neil MacNeil, D.C. journalist

Neil MacNeil, a congressional correspondent for Time magazine for nearly 30 years and an early presence on public affairs television shows, died Saturday at his home in suburban Bethesda, Md., of lung cancer. He was 85.

After an early career as a Washington reporter for the United Press wire service, MacNeil joined Time in 1958 and became its chief congressional correspondent.

In 1964, his public affairs show “Neil MacNeil Reports From Congress” began airing on WETA. Three years later, he became a founding panelist on “Washington Week in Review,” now called “Washington Week.”

His books included “Forge of Democracy” (1963), a widely praised history of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hudson, N.Y.

Eliot Asinof, ballplayer, author

Eliot Asinof, a one-time minor league baseball player who traded a first baseman’s mitt and spikes for a pad and pen and who wrote the definitive book on the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal, died Tuesday at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, N.Y., of complications of pneumonia. He was 88.

Asinof, a versatile freelancer for more than half a century, wrote more than a dozen books. Although only three were about baseball, he was labeled a baseball writer because of “Eight Men Out” (1963), his account of the scheme concocted by gamblers and eight members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the 1919 World Series. Some reviewers have called it one of the best baseball books ever written.

A 1988 movie of the same name, directed by John Sayles, with a script by Sayles and Asinof, starred John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and Barbara Garrick.