Bang the Drum Slowly played to rave reviews then faded into the obscurity of modern-day Americana, waiting to be rediscovered. Its interest lies not in the filming-ordinary enough, as directed by John Hancock-but in a literate script in which baseball is played for all it promises in the way of cynical observations on the game and life. And it sports a cast that is able to carry it off: Robert De Niro, as a tobacco chewing, backwoods Georgian, none the more sophisticated for being thrust into the big leagues as catcher on a major New York team, who is pitched a death sentence by the Mayo Clinic; Michael Moriarty as his only friend, stopped short temporarily on a meteoric rise to the soulless big-time; and Vincent Gardenia as the team's shrewd manager, bent on discovering De Niro's secret. De Niro perfected a "look" for the role-the distracted look of someone who has enough on his mind trying to bumble his way through a simple day, without being asked to systematize his catching method...or to realize that he is dying. The subtle transition of that look, from deadpan outwardness to baffled inwardness as he digests his fate, is De Niro's coup. Time critic Richard Schickel called Bang the Drum Slowly "very possibly the best movie about sport ever made in this country. Director Hancock and writer Harris (adapting his own fine novel) have great, knowledgeable fun with the game, getting in their licks at greedy owners, new-breed ballplayers...and old-breed managers and coaches who fail to understand that the game is merely a metaphor for life, not life itself. But the genius of the movie lies in its introduction of the one subject that superb- ly conditioned young men rarely think about: death."