When Pride Still Mattered Chapter 1 - Tattoos
Welcome to the Blue 58 Book Club! Every week, we post notes on a book we’re reading as a community. Follow along with our reader notes here, and go deeper into the discussion as a member of our Discord server, which is only accessible to our supporters on Patreon and Substack. Currently we’re working through When Pride Still Mattered by David Maraniss.
The older I get, the more I see myself in light of those who came before me. I am my father and my mother. I am my grandparents. I am Gerrit Hendrick Meerdink, who came to America from the Netherlands in the 1860s. Maybe that’s melodramatic, but I don’t think so. It is, in any case, why the first chapter of When Pride Still Mattered resonated with me.
“Everything begins with the body of the father” is a heck of a way to open a book, even one about a man who was “just” a football coach, however much Vince Lombardi can be said to be “just” anything. But the meditation on Lombardi’s parents is appropriate and interesting because they defined so much about who he was and what he would become.
Lombardi’s Catholicism came from his parents, and it subsequently defined his educational and career path, which eventually led him to the Packers. I don’t know how you can separate Lombardi from his parents for that reason alone, and I think it’s clear how you see the structure and routine of confession, mass, and prayer show up in Lombardi’s later work and career. Maraniss writes “his religion was as much a matter of discipline and routine as devotion.” To be sure, it does seem that Lombardi was devoted to his religion, but it was also something that had been established in his life and eventually became part of who he was. He couldn’t be Vince Lombardi without it.
Maybe that’s why Lombardi’s devotion to perfection comes through so clearly in his coaching. Striving for perfection was a part of who he was. He couldn’t be anything else. It’s what his parents had made him.
Interesting Details
Harry Lombardi’s nickname, “Old Five-by-Five,” is just tremendous, especially considering how everyone in his neighborhood probably knew him by that name. Organic, community nicknames are just the best.
Here’s what Lombardi’s childhood home and neighborhood look like today at 2542 East 14th Street in Brooklyn, New York.
Count me in for Saturday dinner at the Lombardi household: “The wine was homemade — Concord grapes picked from the back vineyard, featuring a strong and fruity bouquet that took some getting used to. After antipasto came homemade soup, usually minestrone, sometimes a tart dandelion, followed by spaghetti and meatballs with hot red peppers, or freshly made ravioli, then stuffed capons or braciola, and the Izzo specialty pies. Spinach Pie: Boil fresh spinach and dry. Place in piecrust with sauteed onions and olive oil, salt and pepper, add diced green onions and bake. Ricotta Pie: mix ricotta with eggs and parsley, grated Parmesan cheese and Italian sausage. Array in piecrust and bake.”
Newspapers aren’t what they used to be. I’d read a story titled “IZZO FAMILY OF SHEEPSHEAD IS INTERESTING.” I searched the archives of The Brooklyn Eagle and was unable to find that story, alas.
Izzo’s Barber Shop sounds like a rough place to hang out if you don’t know what you’re in for, but perhaps that’s fitting when the proprietor is a tough character like Tony the Barber. “You not only got a shave, but you gave a tip and got a tip.” I don’t think I’d be among the people passed that sort of information, for whatever that’s worth.
I wasn’t able to track down the location of the Lombardi Bros. meat wholesaler on Google maps, but man, what I wouldn’t give to have a job where I got to stamp things with my company ring like Lombardi’s dad did. Signet rings need to come back into fashion.
I don’t agree with everything in the quote Maraniss used from the 1931 essay from Cathedral Annual on the pitfalls of football, but it’s hard not to see some echoes of this in college football today, especially this section: In indubitably leads to the adoption of questionable ethical practices and unsportsmanlike conduct. It sanctions the evasion of rules, trickery, undesirable recruiting practices bordering on professionalism, and a lack of courtesy.” I don’t know if you could put together a better section on what Maraniss later refers to as “the innocent past.” Sports have basically always been dirty. “The sports of yesteryear might seem purer in retrospect because the larger culture keeps changing,” he writes. “Money increases, information comes faster, and sources of temptation multiply. But human nature remains essentially the same, no more or less pure from one generation to the next.”
Packers Connections
This is a somewhat tenuous Packers connection, but I think it’s worth noting that Lombardi’s “football epiphany” involved competition against Sid Luckman, the future great quarterback of the Bears. Luckman was done as a player by the time Lombardi arrived in the NFL, but he and Lombardi were on opposing sides during Lombardi’s time with the Giants, Packers, and Redskins after Luckman moved into coaching.