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 fictional 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. It is regarded as one of the best of all baseball stories. Dr. Mark Harris (born November 19, 1922 in Mount Vernon, New York) is an American author, novelist and educator, best known for a quartet of baseball novels: The Southpaw (1953); Bang the Drum Slowly (1956); A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957) and It Looked Like Forever (1979). ... The Southpaw was the first of the Henry Wiggen baseball novels by Mark Harris, published in 1953. ... Major league affiliations American League (1901–present) East Division (1969–present) Current uniform Retired Numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 23, 32, 37, 44, 49 Name New York Yankees (1913–present) New York Highlanders (1903-1912) Baltimore Orioles (1901-1902) (Also referred to as Americans...

The opening scenes of the movie show the stars running the track at Yankee Stadium before its 1973 to 1976 renovation, but due to the renovation, the baseball scenes were filmed in Shea Stadium. The exterior of Yankee Stadium Yankee Stadium is the home stadium of the New York Yankees, a major league baseball team. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ... William A. Shea Municipal Stadium usually shortened to Shea Stadium, is a baseball stadium in Flushing, New York. ...

The 1973 film starred Michael Moriarty as Wiggen, and a young unknown actor named Robert De Niro in the role of Pearson, and it was met with box office success and critical acclaim. De Niro's performance in the film and in Mean Streets, released two months later, brought him widespread acclaim. Compared with other roles which have seemed to typecast him as a troubled loner (as in The Deer Hunter and Raging Bull) or a charismatic sociopath (as in The Godfather: Part II, Taxi Driver, Once Upon A Time In America, Goodfellas, and Cape Fear, to name a few), the Pearson role has been regarded as one of his more tragic and sensitive characters. Michael Moriarty as Benjamin Stone on Law & Order. ... Robert De Niro Jr. ... Mean Streets (1973) is an early Martin Scorsese film starring Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. ... The Deer Hunter is a 1978 film which tells the story of how the Vietnam War affects the people in the industrial town of Clairton, Pennsylvania just south of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River (although it was also filmed in Cleveland and Mingo Junction, Ohio). ... Raging Bull is a 1980 film directed by Martin Scorsese, and written by Paul Schrader, and Mardik Martin. ... Al Pacino as Don Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II The Godfather, Part II is the 1974 sequel to The Godfather. ... Taxi Driver is a 1976 American motion picture drama directed by Martin Scorsese. ... Once Upon a Time in America (original title Cera una volta in America) (1984) is director Sergio Leones last film, which features Robert De Niro and James Woods as two Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in the New York City organized crime world. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... This article is about the geographical feature on the coast of North Carolina. ...

Moriarty is the grandson of former major-league outfielder and umpire George Moriarty. George Joseph Moriarty (June 7, 1884 – April 8, 1964) was an American third baseman, umpire and manager in Major League Baseball from 1903 to 1940. ...

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. This is a list of fictional games, that is games specifically created for works of fiction. ...

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". Family Guy is an American animated comedy created by Seth MacFarlane for FOX in 1999. ... Brian Does Hollywood is an episode of Family Guy. ... Brian Griffin is a cartoon character on the FOX animated television series Family Guy, and is voiced by the shows creator, Seth MacFarlane. ...

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 (Piney Woods, a back-up catcher recently recalled from the minors) at a team gathering. Streets of Laredo, also known as the Cowboys Lament, is a famous cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy dispenses his advice to a living one. ... The Piney Woods viewed from Loop 390 outside of Marshall, Texas The Piney Woods is a terrestrial ecoregion in the Southern United States covering 54,400 mi² (140,900 km²) of East Texas, Southern Arkansas, Western Louisiana, and Southeastern Oklahoma. ...

This film is reportedly Robert De Niro's colleague Al Pacino's favorite film. Legend has it that Pacino was originally cast in the Pearson role, but was offered the coveted role of Michael Corleone in "The Godfather", which he accepted. De Niro, also cast in "The Godfather" but in a smaller role, was offered up as a substitute by Francis Ford Coppola.

External links

• Bang the Drum Slowly at the Internet Movie Database
• All Movie Guide entry
• Bosque Boys: "My Favorite Baseball Movie"