I think it's safe to say the second book in the series is by far the most famous of the four-book story arc (with "The Southpaw" running a distant second). "Bang" received tremendous reviews, not only as a great baseball book but as a well-written and touching piece of fiction. It also became the only book in the Wiggen series to spawn a movie, starring Michael Moriarty as Wiggen and an unknown young actor as Bruce Pearson. The unknown actor became something of a star.
Quick aside: I once heard a wise man (who happens to be the co-author of this blog) say Robert De Niro was an uninspired choice to play Bruce Pearson. De Niro is not built like a ballplayer at all, and in many of the movie's scenes, he looks like he's a good foot shorter than Moriarty and the other actors portraying ballplayers. He may not look the part, but I think De Niro knocked the role out of the park. Maybe his role here set the tone for his career; less than a year later, De Niro made us an offer we couldn't refuse, starring as young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II.)
So Robert De Niro and the movie brought Wiggen into the public eye. But "Bang the Drum Slowly" is a phenomenal novel in its own right.
"Bang the Drum Slowly" picks up a few years after "The Southpaw" leaves off. New York Mammoths pitcher Henry Wiggen gets a phone call from Rochester, Minnesota, informing him that Bruce Pearson, the Mammoths' third-string catcher and Wiggen's roommate, is sick. The doctors in Rochester say Pearson has Hodgkin's Disease, and could die at any time. Wiggen and Pearson keep the news to themselves (although Henry shares with his wife, Holly.)
Henry is holding out for more money before the start of the 1955 season, but he strikes a deal with the Mammoths ownership that ties him and Pearson together - if one gets traded, they both get traded. That way, Henry can take care of Bruce and call a doctor when "the attack" comes.
Throughout the book, Mammoths manager Dutch Schnell works to figure out why Wiggen would request such an unusual clause, even hiring a private eye. Eventually Dutch finds out, and despite Henry's best efforts, all the rest of the Mammoths do, too. And while the Mammoths chase the pennant, Bruce's health deteriorates, even as his baseball abilities skyrocket.
There's a very clear moral to this story. Before his teammates find out, Bruce is constantly the butt of the joke; he's ragged by everybody, and he's often too slow-witted to figure out he's being ragged. But the teammates treat Bruce like their best friend when they discover his terminal illness. Wiggen says everybody is dying; Bruce is just doing it a little faster. So why rag anybody?
It's difficult for an author to pull off a novel with such a cut-and-dry moral lesson without the book becoming pure corn. But Mark Harris does it.
"Bang the Drum Slowly" is about dying, and it's about wrestling with fate, and it's about friendship, and just a little bit, in the dark corners, it's about baseball. It's a hundred pages shorter than "The Southpaw," which keeps it from dragging in the middle, but it still feels like a fully fleshed-out tale.
If "The Southpaw" is the baseball version of the Great American Novel, "Bang the Drum Slowly" is the classic American story.
--Matt Kelsey
For me, the answer is because baseball is fun to play. I played every sport from third grade on, but I never enjoyed playing any of them like I did baseball. I can still remember stepping up to the plate and listening to my parents and my friends’ parents shouting encouragement while the rival team’s managers were yelling words against me and the infield was chattering. Baseball is a team sport and yet, it’s individual, too. When you step in the batter’s box, the weight is on you. You can look ridiculous at bat or in the field. And the game moves slower, so you have to face whatever it is that doesn’t go your way. I could never be a pitcher. Other than a boxer knocked to the mat, I don’t have empathy for anyone more so than a pitcher who’s seen his best pitch branded by a bat label and walloped over the fence. He has to stand there and listen to the crowd and watch the batter round the bases, then pull himself together on the lonely mound and throw strikes again. Strikes, not balls. Right back to the quest for perfection. Baseball has everything boys want. You get to play in the dirt, foremost. You get to take big swings and hit things. You get to run. You get to spit. You get to slide. I suppose you could make an argument that you can do the same in football or another sport, but I suppose it’s hard to romanticize something so violent. Football comes around when everything about the world is dying or turning cold. Winter is coming on. Hope doesn’t have a position. There are so many individual wars on given play you can’t possibly take in the whole game. Basketball is played indoors and by that arrangement the possibilities of it being something larger are impossible, also given the fact that it was invented to give football players something to do in the off season. I used to love baseball. I used to love the uniforms. The stirrups, the batter’s helmets, the batter’s glove. It was sort of a costume that you put on and you went out and played games for the optimist club, a gas station or an auto repair shop. People who paid real money to sponsor your team and you really wanted to win for those people. Baseball is a spectacle. When you hit a long shot, people stop and watch the ball fly. I’m not sure people look at the sky any more – not to see what’s in it, other than the weather. No one studies it, except kids and adults who look through it, trying to make predictions. My favorite part of baseball was the conversations that went on with the base coaches. That was your reward for a decent hit. There was a face waiting for you. How different does it feel to stand on second? You feel naked out there, far from the dug out, stranded, waiting. I don’t know. I think it’s fun. Fun is the answer. And it’s fun to write about. Look all the words it prompted from me.