never knew or am only in the foggiest haze about is quite amazing. ~ Henry “Author” Wiggins
Bang the Drum Slowly is the first-person narrative of ace pitcher Henry Wiggins recounting the baseball campaign of the 1955 New York Mammoths. Henry is “Author” to his teammates because he wrote a book about an earlier season.
The team is filled with characters of similarly colorful nicknames: Lawyer, Canada, Ugly, Goose, Horse, and the team manager Dutch. During the off-season, Author learns that his best friend on the team, Bruce Pearson, is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease which is sure to be fatal in a year or less. Bruce can still play, and Author agrees to keep his condition secret.
Bruce was never a great player and is rather simple. He doesn’t grasp why Henry is nicknamed Author and instead calls him Arthur. In his simplicity, Bruce accepts his fate philosophically.
“I have been handed a shit deal,” he said. “I am doomeded.”
“But the world is all rosy,” he said. “It never looked better. The bad things never looked so little, and the good never looked so big. Food tastes better. Things do not matter too much any more.”
As the baseball campaign begins, the Mammoths appear to be the team to beat, but they can never quite shake the Washington team, who is always 2 or 3 games behind. Author is convinced it is because there is too much dissension on the team, much of it directed towards Bruce for his simple ways.
The summer was still very young. The club was not a club, which I personally blame on Joe Jaros to begin with and Goose and Horse and the 4 colored boys and everybody else that couldn’t get in the act quick enough, thinking they had the flag in their pocket in May and looking for amusement, thinking it was amusement when what it was was horseshit pure and simple.
Of course, the secret does not keep all summer. A few of the Mammoths learn, and they are suddenly nicer to Bruce, who observes…
Probably everybody be nice to you if they knew you were dying.
And eventually, the entire team learns, though they never tell Bruce, and suddenly…
It was a club, like it should have been all year but never was but all of a sudden become, and we clinched it the first night in Cleveland…
Winning the Pennant means the World Series, where anything can happen. I’ll spare the spoiler.
I enjoyed this book. It was sweet and poignant. It reminded me of Of Mice and Men, or more precisely, Author and Bruce reminded me of George and Lenny. But at the risk of seeming cynical, it wasn’t entirely convincing. I don’t quite buy the complete, immediate, and unanimous change in Bruce’s teammates. The narrative was superb, the characters fantastic, and then, well, it’s Baseball!
How can you not be romantic about baseball? ~ Jared Lax - Moneyball
My rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars
I read this for the What’s in a Name Challenge 2022, “Speed” category (any reference to speed).
The New York Mammoths are probably based on the New York Giants, though I don’t believe there is any specific character mapping. It is the most critically acclaimed and popular in Harris’ baseball tetralogy: The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly, A Ticket for Seamstitch, and It Looked Like For Ever, all of which are fictionally penned by Henry “Author” Wiggens.
You might tell yourself 100 times a day, “Everybody dies sooner or later,” and that might be true, too, which in fact it is now that I wrote it, but when it is happening sooner instead of later you keep worrying about what you say now, and how you act now. There is no time to say, “Well, I been a heel all week but I will be better to him beginning Monday’ because Monday might never come.
Film rendition: The 1973 film stars Michael Moriarty as Author and Robert De Niro as Bruce. It is pretty faithful, though they changed the setting to the 70s. I thought the story worked better in the book, in the 50s, but it was still a decent flick.
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