Recently, 'Prince' senior writer Sofia Mata-Leclerc sat down to chat with Pulitzer Prizewinning writer David Maraniss, a visiting Council for the Humanities Robbins Professor who is teaching HUM 440: 'The Literature of Fact' this spring.
In 2002, Sports Illustrated named his biography of famed Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, "When Pride Still Mattered," to its list of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. He is currently working on a biography of Pittsburgh Pirates great Roberto Clemente.
Daily Princetonian: Let's start with your book on Vince Lombardi. What prompted your interest?
David Maraniss: I grew up in Wisconsin, and Lombardi was a huge figure of my teenage years. Even though I know, had he seen me, he would have told me to get a goddamn haircut, and we were different in so many ways, he was sort of winning for Wisconsin and the all of the midwest against the rest of the world.
I've always loved sports, but I don't want to just write a sports book. Lombardi to me represented a great personal story and something larger, which was a way to explore the whole mythology of winning and success in American life.
DP: Did you play football yourself?
DM: No, it wasn't my favorite sport. I played touch football, but, you know, I'm kind of an asthmatic, and baseball was my favorite sport. There are parts of football that I don't even like, but there are parts that I love. It can be very dramatic, and I like parts of the notion of teamwork. I'm not crazy about the violent nature of it, or what athletes have to do to bulk up to play football these days.
So it wasn't the attraction of football, nor really just writing about a coach. I wouldn't write about Woody Hayes or Bear Bryant or Chuck Knoll — it was Lombardi. There was something about him that attracted me more than the sport.
DP: So you like baseball. What's your favorite team?
DM: Well, my favorite teams have always been pathetic. I liked the Milwaukee Braves when I was a kid, and Henry Aaron and the whole team of the late 1950s and early 60s, but they moved and broke everyone's heart.
Then I have always liked the Cubs. I think I would like the Cubs if they actually won, but I like the idea of the Cubs. I love Wrigley Field.
I love the Cleveland Indians because, in 1954, I was five years old when they won the American League pennant, and that was my first consciousness of baseball. I remember going out to the airport when they came home and getting a ball signed.
I like teams that have players that I love. So, I like the Pittsburgh Pirates because of Roberto Clemente, and then the Indians had a guy named Vic Power who I also loved. They both happened to be black Puerto Ricans, and there was just something about both of them that I thought was incredibly cool and graceful.
DP: Was it their style of play or the way they interacted with the fans?
DM: Well, with Power, it was purely his style of play. He played first base, and he played so nonchalantly like he wasn't even trying, but he was always out there making good plays. With Clemente it was everything, both as a player and as a person, and that's why I'm writing a book about him right now.
DP: So tell us about Clemente.
DM: Clemente was the first great Latin baseball player to make it in the major leagues, and he was black and Latin. He played in the working-class town of Pittsburgh his whole career; always feeling sort of underappreciated because he wasn't fluent in English and reporters would quote him in pidgin English.
Everything about his play was fabulous, but beyond that, he radiated this sort of grace which came through in everything he did. Late in his life, he said that anybody who doesn't do something for the rest of the world isn't living. This was a guy who did as much as he could.
He died heroically in a plane crash delivering humanitarian aid to Nicaragua during an earthquake. He was only 38 years old. Because of the way he carried himself, that he was black and proud of it and in his moment of national glory [when the Pirates won the world series in 1971], he said: "Before I say anything in English, I would like to say something to my family in Spanish in Puerto Rico." All of Latin America went nuts.
So because of the way he carried himself, because of the way he died, because when the plane crashed they never found his body, served to create this saintlike myth to Clemente, so that now you go to Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, parts of Latin America, Clemente is like a saint.
DP: When do you expect the book to come out?
DM: Are you my editor? [Laughs] I think I'll be done by October or November, and it will be out next spring.
DP: So I read that you have a house in D.C. Are you an Orioles fan?
DM: I've made it to a lot of Orioles games, but now I have tickets to the Nationals.
DP: Have you made it out to a Princeton baseball game?
DM: Not yet. All I've done so far is gone to see the crew team row last Saturday.
DP: Oh dear. That wasn't such a good race.
DM: Yeah, but at least they weren't MIT.
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