Bang the Drum Slowly

Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), a novel by American writer Mark Harris, concerns the last months of a baseball player, Bruce Pearson, who is desperate to hide his terminal diagnosis to stay on his team. He is aided by his teammate, Henry “Author” Wiggen, who is also the narrator: the novel’s full title is Bang the Drum Slowly by Henry W. Wiggen: Certain of His Enthusiasms Restrained by Mark Harris. It is the second novel “written” by Henry W. Wiggen, who throughout Bang the Drum Slowly refers to—and even quotes from—Harris’s 1953 novel The Southpaw. Harris would go on to write two more novels narrated by Wiggen: A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957), and It Looked Like For Ever (1979). However, Bang the Drum Slowly is the best-known and most favorably reviewed of the series.

The novel begins as Henry receives a phone call. It’s Bruce, asking Henry to come to visit him in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Henry is the star pitcher for the New York Mammoths (a fictional baseball team based on the New York—now San Francisco—Giants), while Bruce is a third-string catcher whose teammates “rag” him for being none too smart. Henry doesn’t want to make the trip, but he’s a team player and he also sold Bruce his life insurance. Expecting a child, Henry has begun to sell insurance so that he will be able to provide for his family when his playing days are over.

At the clinic, Bruce reveals that he is dying: he has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. Henry checks him out of the clinic and together they drive to Bainbridge, Georgia, Bruce’s hometown. Bruce tells Henry that he wants to spend his last months on Earth playing baseball, but he knows that if the team’s manager, Dutch Schnell, or the owner, Lester T. Moors, Jr. were to learn of Bruce’s illness they would release him. Henry agrees to keep Bruce’s illness a secret. Privately, he decides he’s going to try to make Bruce’s last season his best ever.



Henry is due to negotiate his contract for the year, and as the team’s star player, he has a lot of clout. Instead of signing, he demands that a clause be written into his own contract that will keep Bruce on the team, whatever happens. Suspicious, Dutch hires a private detective to find out what Bruce’s secret is. Henry’s teammates are baffled too. They don’t understand why “Author” (as they call Henry) is going out of his way to protect Bruce, who’s not only a second-rate player but also a dumb rural Southerner: “not only from the country but…dumb from the country, and on top of that from the dumbest part of the country there is.” Even Henry finds it hard not to rag Bruce sometimes. Bruce calls him “Arthur” because he doesn’t know what an author is.

The Mammoths’ season starts well, but they’re hampered by a lack of team unity. The players continue to “rag” Bruce. Henry tries to stop them with little success, until Bruce’s secret begins to get out. Henry can always tell when a new player has learned Bruce’s secret, because he suddenly starts being nice to Bruce. No one openly discusses Bruce’s condition, but the other players start to rally around him, taking him for drinks or inviting him to poker. Henry tries to help Bruce improve his game.

Meanwhile, Henry’s wife Holly goes into labor and gives birth to a daughter before Henry arrives at the hospital. They name her Michele.



Bruce’s mother dies. The team rallies round, sending flowers to her funeral. Bruce is in love with a prostitute named Katie. He asks her to marry him. At first, she refuses him, but when she learns that he has a substantial life insurance policy (sold to him by Henry), she agrees. Bruce asks Henry to make Katie the beneficiary of the policy, but Henry, suspecting that Katie is taking advantage of Bruce, only pretends to change it. In turn, suspecting that Henry is only pretending, Katie pressures him to make the change, but he refuses.

The team has bonded over Bruce’s secret, and with the increased team unity, they are on course to win their league. On Labor Day, Bruce passes out midway through a game. Henry abandons the game to accompany Bruce to hospital, fearing that Bruce will die. Bruce pulls through, and the Mammoths win without Henry. By the first game of the World Series, Bruce is well enough to watch and cheer from the bench. For the second half of the Series, Bruce is watching from home, but he lives long enough to see the Mammoths win before he dies. In the novel’s final line, Henry pledges: “From here on in, I rag nobody.”

Bang the Drum Slowly explores themes of comradeship, determination, and mortality. Called “sad, funny, human” by Kirkus Reviews, it is regarded as one of the best American baseball novels and a major influence on the genre.