Bang the Drum Slowly
- May 15
- 2 min read
Baseball is my favorite sport. It’s the most perfect game ever invented. If you don’t agree, well, that’s okay—you just don’t understand it, the games within the game. So, it’s no surprise that I’m just as passionate about movies about baseball. There are so many great ones. but there’s one gem that often gets overlooked…and that’s Bang the Drum Slowly. Made in 1973, it was written by Mark Harris, which he adapted from his own novel. The story takes place during one season in the life of a fictional team—the New York Mammoths—and focuses on the ebb and flow of life in the clubhouse as the players slowly begin to learn that more than just baseball is being played. One of their teammates is dying.
If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t worry; I’m not spoiling the drama for you. You get the bad news in the first minute of the film when Bruce Pearson—the catcher of the Mammoths—and Henry Wiggen—the team’s star pitcher—have just learned that Bruce is terminally ill. How long he will live no one knows. So, Henry and Bruce decide to not to tell the rest of the team. Whatever time remains for Bruce, he just wants to make the most of it by playing the game he loves. and his good friend Henry wants to help Bruce’s wish come true.
What makes this story especially poignant is that while Bruce is sweet and good-natured, he’s also painfully slow-witted, with a dopey smile. He’s an easy target for the ridicule of his teammates. Worse—because he’s only an average ballplayer—the Mammoths are considering cutting him from the team. But Henry has no intention of letting that happen to his friend. Before signing his new contract with the Mammoths, Henry insists under no circumstances will the team separate he and Bruce. Reluctantly, the manager agrees, but he’s determined to find out the truth behind Henry’s request. Meanwhile, the Mammoths find themselves in a pennant race, and Bruce begins to play perhaps the best baseball of his career.
Robert DeNiro plays Bruce, in one of his earliest roles. Michael Moriarity is his good friend Henry. And shades of Earl Weaver, Vincent Gardenia is their snarling, chain-smoking manager.
Bang the Drum Slowly is a lovely, low-key character study about baseball before the era of free agents and big money contracts. I give it four out of four stars. It doesn’t inflate the drama or romance of the game. It does not treat baseball as a metaphor for the meaning of life. That’s fine for other baseball movies.
Fortunately, Bang the Drum Slowly is refreshingly different.
