Bang the Drum Slowly

OK, OK ... I've been thinking about reading this book for ... decades. And every time I've picked it up, I realized I needed to read The Southpaw first, and I wasn't that enthusiastic about starting a serial about baseball. So I finally got around to the The Southpaw, and I thought it was good, bett......more

I haven’t read a book quite like this in my life, and I’m not likely to again—no one else I’ve read writes in anything close to this voice. “But you do miss the noise and the excitement,” he said. “You never pass a ball field without lumping up a little in your throat. Goddam it anyhow, by the ti......more

Bang the Drum Slowly is a first-person narrative told by Henry “Author” Wiggam, a major league baseball pitcher and writer. Wiggam’s story is about a dying backup catcher who has no friends on the team and a magical season where everything comes together for Wiggam professionally. The best of times......more

A beautiful novel about baseball and about death, aka TEGWAR, The Exciting Game Without Any Rules. The second and best of Mark Harris's Henry Wiggen books, which the Bison imprint of University of Nebraska Press has brought back into print (though you can still get the paperback containing the three......more