Bang the Drum Slowly is a novel by Mark Harris, first published in 1956 by Knopf. The novel is the second in a series of four novels written by Harris that chronicles the career of baseball player Henry W. Wiggen. Bang the Drum Slowly was a sequel to The Southpaw (1953), with A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957) and It Looked Like For Ever (1979), completing the tetralogy of baseball novels by Harris.

Mark Harris was an American novelist, literary biographer, and educator, remembered for his baseball novels featuring Henry Wiggen, particularly Bang the Drum Slowly. Harris's obituary in The Denver Post calls him "one of that legion of under-the-radar writers who for decades consistently turned out excellent novels and went largely unsung as he did...Harris said of his books that 'they are about the one man against his society and trying to come to terms with his society, and trying to succeed within it without losing his own identity or integrity.' He might have said the same thing of himself."