Bang the Drum Slowly

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Bang the Drum Slowly was Mark Harris's most celebrated baseball novel, a sequel to The Southpaw (1953). First published in 1956 and made famous by television (1956-with Paul Newman starring) and film (1973) adaptations. Harris's narrator Henry Wiggen, a star pitcher, tells the story of a baseball season with the New York Mammoths (a fictonal team based on the New York Yankees) -- a season notable for the team's success but blighted by the terminal illness of catcher Bruce Pearson. Wiggen is probably the smartest player on the ballclub, and Pearson is likely the dumbest. Wiggen tries to be supportive of Pearson while concealing his illness. Lyrical and emotional without becoming melodramatic; one of the best of all baseball stories.

In the Family Guy episode Brian Does Hollywood, Brian Griffin directs a pornographic movie and the producer compares the script to that of Bang the Drum Slowly, "except the drum is a chick".

There is no drum in the film or the book. The title comes from the song The Streets of Laredo, sung by one of the ballplayers at a team gathering.

The film and book include a fictional card game known as tegwar, which means "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules." It is a game basically designed to separate a sucker from his cash. Henry Wiggen plays this game along with other ballplayers and coaches, to sucker passers by in the lobby of the team hotel. It is generally believed that Bruce Pearson is too dumb to be able to sucker people, so he is excluded. However, Henry begins to include Bruce in the tegwar games as the story progresses.

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