The Meaning of Clemente
About this Episode
Spring has sprung, and we're missing baseball. In this episode of Ink in our Blood we talk about David's biography of Roberto Clemente, the luminescent right-fielder from Puerto Rico, an athlete whose humanitarian grace and love for his homeland and working people everywhere transcended even his remarkable skills as a ballplayer. Sarah asks David why he felt such a soulful attachment to Clemente, how he conducted his research for the biography, how he came to understand "the fire of dignity" that drove Clemente through his life and toward his death - in a plane crash on the way to deliver aid to Nicaragua after the 1972 earthquake. They also talk about the work on a movie based on his biography, and about his reaction to the Hollywood portrayal of Moneyball, where the beauty of the sport hit up against dry algorithmic strategy.
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Educating Elliott: Abraham Lincoln High and University of Michigan
In this episode, David talks about researching the formative years of his father, Elliott Maraniss, whose ordeal before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and time in the crucible of the Red Scare are the subject of his latest book, A Good American Family. In Elliott’s old Boy Scout newsletter, high school yearbooks and articles in the University of Michigan student paper, David found the paper trail that revealed the shaping of his father’s life and political beliefs during the great depression and run-up to World War II. In the New York Public Library and the digital archive of the Michigan Daily, David came upon influential moments and people: the brilliant Jewish teachers at Abraham Lincoln High, kept from university jobs by quotas, who told Elliott’s class ‘they could not afford to be another lost generation,” as well as Elliott’s cohort at the Michigan Daily that included a young Arthur Miller and the poet John Malcom Brinnin. The newspaper was first-class, cultivating, as all good student newspaper do, a generation of writers and space for questioning authority. But the biggest revelation was the article he found confirming a family tale about how his parents met: A banquet on campus for Bob Cummins, home from the Spanish Civil War; his younger sister, Mary Cummins in attendance. And covering the event for The Michigan Daily was Elliott Maraniss.
Lombardi + The Making of the Play
In this episode, Sarah and David speak with actor Dan Lauria, who played Vince Lombardi in the Broadway production of LOMBARDI, written by Eric Simonson and based on David’s book, When Pride Still Mattered. Known for his portrayal of Jack Arnold in The Wonder Years, Dan, who is also a writer and fierce advocate for new plays, describes working with director Tommy Kail before his break-out success in Hamilton and with his co-star, Judith Light, whose nuanced portrayal of Marie Lombardi earned a Tony nomination. With his warm, funny, energetic personality, Dan regales listeners with stories about his father, the truck driver whose childhood best friend was Yankee hall of famer Phil Rizzuto, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the Broadway run. He also offers a vision for new play production in the changed social environment with an idea that might remind listeners of the golden age of television.