Mark Harris | Novelist, 84
Mark Harris, 84, best known for baseball novels that include Bang the Drum Slowly , died in a Santa Barbara, Calif., hospital on Wednesday, a month after he broke his hip in a fall and contracted pneumonia, said his wife, Josephine. Mr. Harris also had Alzheimer's disease, she said.
Mark Harris, 84, best known for baseball novels that include
Bang the Drum Slowly
, died in a Santa Barbara, Calif., hospital on Wednesday, a month after he broke his hip in a fall and contracted pneumonia, said his wife, Josephine. Mr. Harris also had Alzheimer's disease, she said.
He wrote five nonfiction books and 13 novels, including the baseball books The Southpaw (1953), Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957), and It Looked Like for Ever (1979).
Bang the Drum Slowly, which he adapted for the 1973 movie starring Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro, was the most popular of the four, and in 2002 Sports Illustrated ranked it 14th among the top 100 sports books of all time.
The story centers on a pair of ballplayers for the fictional New York Mammoths. Moriarty played pitcher Henry Wiggen, and De Niro played catcher Bruce Pearson, who is dying of Hodgkin's disease.
Diamond, a collection of Mr. Harris' baseball essays over nearly a half-century, was published in 1994.
His nonfiction books include City of Discontent: An Interpretive Biography of Vachel Lindsay; Mark the Glove Boy, or the Last Days of Richard Nixon; and Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Harris is survived by sons Henry and Anthony; daughter Hester Harris; three grandchildren; and a sister. - AP