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Well Known baseball novelist Mark Harris Dies at age of 84

August 16th, 2007

Mark Harris was best known for his exciting baseball novels, such as Bang the Drum Slowly. The novelist died last Wednesday at Cottage Hospital. He was 84 years old. His wife stated that he had died from Alzheimer’s disease. The talented author wrote 5 non-fiction books and 13 novels. The best-known among them include Bang the Drum Slowly, The Southpaw, It Looked Like Forever, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch. Bang the Drum Slowly
was adapted for the 1973 film starring Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty. In fact, it was the most popular of the four books. Sports Illustrated named it one of the Top Hundred sports books of all time. In 1994, a collection of Mark?s baseball essays over nearly a half-century, entitled Diamond,
was published. Haris’s other non-fiction works included Mark the Glove Boy, or The Last Days of Richard Nixon, City of Discontent: An Interpretive Biography of Vachel Lindsay, and Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck. The novelist taught in the English departments at University of Southern California,
San Francisco State University, the University of Minnesota, California Institute of the Arts, Purdue University, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1980 to 2001, Mark Harris was also a professor of English at Arizona State University. Mark Harris, according to his wife’s statement, will be cremated. A portion of his ashes will be scattered over the baseball field in Mount Vernon, where he used to play sandlot baseball.

Entry Filed under: MLB, Baseball