Product details Three-time winner of the National League's Most Valuable Player award, Roy Campanella was catcher for the Brooklyn (soon to be Los Angeles) Dodgers in January 1958, when a car accident left him permanently paralyzed. It's Good to Be Alive describes his determination to rally from helplessness and help other quadriplegics. It looks back to a famous career and to a childhood on the sandlots of Philadelphia. Publishers Weekly,Originally published in 1959, the year after the automobile accident that transformed him from a Hall-of-Fame baseball player to a quadriplegic, Campanella's long out-of-print autobiography nonetheless packs more uplift than any inspirational sports bio (the title says it all). Campy's refusal to succumb in to self-pity is an apt demonstration of the grittiness and self-determination that took him from 15-year-old Negro League catcher to color-barrier pioneer to bona fide major-league star. And yet, read against the backdrop of baseball's current labor unrest, his sunny outlook and unshakable faith seem na���ve. Campanella was, for example, used by his team's management to infiltrate the Negro Leauges to make sure black players they signed weren't too ``risky'' (something that had nothing to do with their on-field talent) and to break the color line in the American Association, at a time when he could have been playing in the major leagues. Although admitting ``confusion'' about his standing as a black man in the Dodgers' organization, he nonetheless is gushingly grateful toward his employers-an attitude both irritating and, as when he seeks advice from Al Campanis, deeply ironic (Campanis was the Dodger exec who said on Nightline that he truly believed blacks lack ``certain necessities'' to hold management jobs in baseball). Campanella's descriptions of his efforts to rebound from the accident-circumstances that might have crushed a lesser spirit-are far better, rescuing the book from the realm of sports clich���. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved,Publishers Weekly,Publishers Weekly,Originally published in 1959, the year after the automobile accident that transformed him from a Hall-of-Fame baseball player to a quadriplegic, Campanella's long out-of-print autobiography nonetheless packs more uplift than any inspirational sports bio (the title says it all). Campy's refusal to succumb in to self-pity is an apt demonstration of the grittiness and self-determination that took him from 15-year-old Negro League catcher to color-barrier pioneer to bona fide major-league star. And yet, read against the backdrop of baseball's current labor unrest, his sunny outlook and unshakable faith seem na���ve. Campanella was, for example, used by his team's management to infiltrate the Negro Leauges to make sure black players they signed weren't too ``risky'' (something that had nothing to do with their on-field talent) and to break the color line in the American Association, at a time when he could have been playing in the major leagues. Although admitting ``confusion'' about his standing as a black man in the Dodgers' organization, he nonetheless is gushingly grateful toward his employers-an attitude both irritating and, as when he seeks advice from Al Campanis, deeply ironic (Campanis was the Dodger exec who said on Nightline that he truly believed blacks lack ``certain necessities'' to hold management jobs in baseball). Campanella's descriptions of his efforts to rebound from the accident-circumstances that might have crushed a lesser spirit-are far better, rescuing the book from the realm of sports clich���. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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