In Memory of Mark Harris: Watch "Bang the Drum Slowly" here

Mark Harris, who wrote four baseball novels focusing on the trials and tribulations of pitcher Henry Wiggen, died Wednesday at 84. The best known of the four, Bang the Drum Slowly, was made into a well-known 1973 movie starring Robert De Niro. First published in 1956, it received its first screen treatment the same year in a CBS teleplay starring Paul Newman. During his literary career, Harris wrote 13 other books.

It Looked Like For Ever, the last of his baseball books, came out in 1979. In the New York Times Book Review, Donald Hall, our current Poet Laureate and the author of the great, but largely unknown, Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, wrote that it "is not so much about baseball as it is about aging, just as ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’ was not so much about baseball as it is about dying.”

In addition to writing, Harris taught English; his final stint in that capacity was at Arizona State University from 1980 to 1982.

The 1956 version of "Bang the Drum Slowly," starring Newman, is presented below. Enjoy.