It's Good to Be Alive

'This book tells two stories. One is about Campy the ballplayer...The other is about Campy the quadriplegic. Either story would make this book worth reading. The combination of the two lifts it far out of the category of the usual as-told-to sports book...Campy comes through. There is enough of his flavor and spirit to make this the real article' - Norman Cousins, "Saturday Review". 'Campy relates the story of his big league adventures and misadventures with sparkling humor, and his whole personality glows in the words that he himself could not write because of his disability' - Arthur Daley, "New York Times". 'Inspiring and engrossing' - "Chicago Sunday Tribune". 'Thrilling...Strictly speaking, this is not an autobiography but a true adventure story of one man's battle against seemingly unsurmountable odds' - "Library Journal".'As intensely personal and vividly human a book as any ball player has ever written...If anybody conveys a feeling of the happiness of being alive, of the physical delight in sports, of quiet pride in having had a part in ending the racial barriers of big league ball, Roy Campanella is the man' - "New York Herald Tribune Book Review". 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. Introducing this Bison Book edition is Jules Tygiel, a professor of history at San Francisco State University and the author of "Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy".