American novelist, biographer, and teacher who wrote Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), about a baseball season with the fictional New York Mammoths. His other works include the racially-themed Trumpet to the World (1946) and the 1953 novel, The Southpaw.
He graduated from both the University of Denver and the University of Minnesota. He began his journalistic career as a reporter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, New York.
He is best known for his novels about baseball players.
He was raised by parents Carlyle and Ruth Finkelstein in Mount Vernon, New York. His birth name was Mark Harris Finkelstein.
His novel, Bang the Drum Slowly, was adapted into a television series starring Paul Newman.
