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Most moviegoers will remember the 1973 film version of Mark Harris' Bang the Drum Slowly for introducing to them an extraordinary new talent -- Robert DeNiro. DeNiro plays the doomed catcher Bruce Pearson (complete with Georgia accent), and his work is unexpectedly gentle and touching. Coming the same year as his incendiary performance in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, it amounted to an incredible one-two career punch, announcing the arrival of a major new star.

But the film version of Bang the Drum Slowly is much more than a notch in DeNiro's filmography. For many sports fans, it is the finest film ever made about baseball. John Hancock directed from Mark Harris' screen adaptation of his own novel, and Michael Moriarty -- then a rising star -- delivers a generous and disarming performance as Henry Wiggen, with Vincent Gardenia as the team's manager Dutch Schnell and Phil Foster as the coach Joe Jaros. Harris' novel had been dramatized once before, for TV, in the 1950s -- Paul Newman played Wiggen, with Albert Salmi as Pearson. But Hancock's film, with its quiet dignity and elegiac tone, is definitive.

When awards were presented for film achievement in 1973, Bang the Drum Slowly made the National Board of Review's list of the year's 10 best films. DeNiro was honored by the New York Film Critics as the year's Best Supporting Actor for his performance in this film and Mean Streets. It is astonishing to look back and realize that DeNiro was completely passed over in the 1973 Oscar race, for either performance. (He won the following year for The Godfather II.) Instead, Vincent Gardenia won a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.