Ebook Notable Sports Figures 1: Part 2

C Roy Campanella 1921-1993 American baseball player nown as “Campy” by his friends, colleagues, and fans, Roy Campanella is considered by many to be the best baseball catcher in the history of the game. He is often mentioned in the same breath as the great catch-er Yogi Berra, who played for the opposing professional league, the American League. Named the National League’s Most Valuable Player three times in the 1950s, Campanella was a pioneering African American player at a time of deep racial prejudice that had prevented blacks from playing in the major leagues until only a year before Campanella joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. Campanella played on the same team as the first African American major leaguer, Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in 1947. Not only was Campanella one of the first African Americans to play in the major leagues, he also paved the way for other blacks to play in the position of catch-er, a spot until then still off-limits to non-white players. As former fellow Dodger Dusty Baker later told Larry Whiteside of the Boston Globe, “In the days when he caught, catching was basically a white position. . . . Catching was a thinking position that most of America didn’t think people like Campanella could handle. He broke the mold. Because of the mentality of the country, the mentality of baseball, to be black and an MVP meant he had to be head and shoulders above anybody else in the league.” Campanella’s career lasted until 1958, when he was paralyzed in an automobile accident. From then on, a total of 35 years until his death, he was confined to a wheelchair. He managed to stay in the game of baseball, however, as a coach and advocate for young baseball players. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969, and he died of a heart attack in 1993. A Born Catcher Roy Campanella was born in Homestead, Pennsylva-nia on November 19, 1921. His mother, Ida, was African Roy Campanella American, while his father, John, was an immigrant from Italy. As a boy, Campanella worked in his father’s produce business and also helped his brother to deliver milk. He first seriously played the game that was to make him famous while still in high school. The posi-tion of catcher was a natural for him even then, since at five feet, nine and one half inches, he was relatively short, and at 190 pounds, was fairly heavy. Also, he dis-covered when trying out for the Simon Gratz High School team, no one else wanted to play catcher. Campanella was just 15 years old in 1937 when he first played professional baseball. This was when he dropped out of school to become a member of the Bacharach Giants, based in Brooklyn, New York. Not long after, he joined the Baltimore Elite Giants, a team of the Negro National League. He remained with the Negro Leagues for nine years, playing each season for 235 Campanella Chronology Notable Sports Figures It’s Good to Be Alive 1921 Born on November 19 in Homestead, Pennsylvania 1937 Drops out of school to join his first professional baseball team, the Bacharach Giants of Brooklyn, New York 1937 Joins the Baltimore Elite Giants, a team of the Negro National League 1946 Signs with the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers, beginning his career with the organization in the minor leagues 1948 Joins the Dodgers’ major league team 1958 Paralyzed in an automobile accident, which ends his baseball playing career 1959 Publishes autobiography, It’s Good to Be Alive 1978 Rejoins Los Angeles Dodgers payroll as a coach and Community Services worker 1993 Dies of heart attack near his Woodland Hills, California home Roy Campanella’s autobiography, It’s Good to Be Alive became the basis of a television movie in 1974. Directed by noted television actor Michael Landon (perhaps best known for his starring role on the Little House on the Prairie TV series), the 100-minute movie was broadcast for the first time on February 22, 1974. This first showing featured an introduc-tion by Campanella and his family. Paul Winfield plays the part of Campanella, and the movie opens with the 1958 auto accident that ended Campanella’s career as a baseball player. Focusing more on the remarkable process by which Campanella created a new life for himself than on the baseball career that made him famous, the film chronicles the collapse of Campanella’s marriage as a direct result of the accident, his physical rehabilitation, and his return to a productive life as a baseball coach and inspirational speaker. It’s Good to Be Alive remains available on both videocassette and DVD from larger video outlets. $3,000 a season. He played an often-grueling schedule with the Elite Giants, once playing four games in a single day. Also in the Negro League, Campanella learned to play in spite of injuries that would have stopped a lesser player. “You didn’t get hurt when you played in the Negro league,” he was later quoted as saying by Robert McG. Thomas Jr. of the New York Times. “You played no matter what happened to you because if you didn’t play, you didn’t get paid.” Dur-ing the off-seasons, in the winter, Campanella played for Latin league baseball teams in Latin America. His ability to speak Spanish was a major asset there, and he was often called upon to manage the teams on which he played. Campanella advanced to the major leagues in 1948, when he began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ major league team. This was only a year after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues. Campanella had actually been approached by Dodgers president Wesley Branch Rick-ey about joining the team in 1945. But Campanella had re-fused the offer, thinking that Rickey was trying to recruit him for a Negro League team he was said to be putting to-gether. In reality, the supposed Negro League team was a cover masking Rickey’s efforts to recruit black players for the Dodgers. Rickey made his offer a little more plain the following season, and this time Campanella accepted. The year was 1946, and Campanella’s first assign-ment with the Dodgers was on the organization’s minor league Class B farm team in Nashua, New Hampshire, where he was paid about $200 a month. This represent-ed a drastic cut in pay, but the chance it gave him to play for the major leagues was too good to pass up. Cam-panella quickly became one of the team’s top players, and a favorite of local fans, who often presented him with gifts of chickens when he pitched winning games. Campanella played a total of 113 games with the Nashua Dodgers, scoring a .290 batting average. Dodger president Rickey moved Campanella up to the Class AAA team in Montreal, where, in 1947, he played catcher for 135 games, hit 13 home runs, and scored a .273 batting average. This was the same year that Jackie Robinson became the first black player to play in the major leagues. Campanella was following in Robinson’s footsteps; Robinson had only the year before played on the Montreal team. An African American First After a brief stint on the St. Paul, Minnesota Class AA team, Campanella was finally moved up to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ major league team in 1948. This made him the first African American catcher in major league baseball, and the fourth African American player in the major leagues. Jackie Robinson had preceded Campanella the year before as the first African American major league baseball player. Robinson was then followed by two other African American players, Larry Doby and Dan Bankhead, before Campanella joined the major leagues. Wearing the number 39 that he was to bear through-out his career, Campanella stepped up to the plate his first night playing as a Brooklyn Dodger, and hit a home run. Also that night, he hit a double and two singles, firmly establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with. Just as he had in the Negro Leagues, Campanella grit his teeth and played through numerous potentially serious injuries during his nine seasons with the Brook-lyn Dodgers. For instance, in 1954, an injury rendered two fingers on his left hand immobile, and he played anyway. “I can grip a bat and I can grip a ball, and that’s all that counts,” said Campanella, according to Thomas. In 1951, Campanella was honored with Most Valuable Player status, a designation that was again bestowed upon him in 1953, when he had what some commenta-tors thought of as his best year. In that year, Campanella had a .312 batting average, and broke three records for a catcher. These were: most putouts in a single season (807), most home runs for a catcher in a single season (41), and most runs batted in within a single season (142). Campanella was named Most Valuable Player a final time in 1955. By the end of his career, Campanella 236 Notable Sports Figures Campanella Career Statistics Yr Team AVG GP AB R H HR RBI BB SO SB 1948 Brooklyn .258 83 279 32 72 9 45 36 45 3 1949 Brooklyn .287 130 436 65 125 22 82 67 36 3 1950 Brooklyn .281 126 437 70 123 31 89 55 51 1 1951 Brooklyn .325 143 505 90 164 33 108 53 51 1 1952 Brooklyn .269 128 468 73 126 22 97 57 59 8 1953 Brooklyn .312 144 519 103 162 41 142 67 58 4 1954 Brooklyn .207 111 397 43 82 19 51 42 49 1 1955 Brooklyn .318 123 446 81 142 32 107 56 41 2 1956 Brooklyn .219 124 388 39 85 20 73 66 61 1 1957 Brooklyn .242 103 330 31 80 13 62 34 50 1 Brooklyn: Brooklyn Dodgers. had played in five World Series, and had been named a National League All-Star a total of eight times. A Career Cut Short Even at the height of his career, however, Campanel-la realized that he could not play baseball indefinitely, and so he opened a Harlem, New York liquor store with which he planned to support his family after his retire-ment from playing baseball. The store was a success, and was soon a prosperous business. The day he was forced to retire from baseball came sooner than Cam-panella planned, however. Early in the morning of Janu-ary 28, 1958, as he was driving back to his Glen Cove, Long Island home from the liquor store, the car he was driving skidded on a slick road, crashed into a tele-phone pole, and overturned. Campanella described the crash in a Los Angeles Times interview that was later quoted by the St. Peters-burg Times. “It had snowed a little that night, and the roads were a little wet and icy. I was about five minutes from my house when I hit some ice driving around a curve. I hit my brakes and the car slid across the road, hit a pole and turned over. I tried to reach up to turn the ignition off because I thought the car would catch fire, but I couldn’t move my arm.” Although he survived the crash, he suffered two frac-tured vertebrae. Five surgeons at Glen Cove Community Hospital worked four and a half hours to save his life. They succeeded in this, but his spine was permanently damaged; he remained paralyzed from the shoulders down. He would never be able to walk or swing a bat again. At the time of his accident, Campanella held a .276 batting average in the major leagues. His major league career total was 1,161 hits in 1,215 games, including 627 runs and 242 home runs, and 856 runs batted in. Many later speculated that, had it not been for the racism that had kept Campanella out of the major leagues until he was 26 years old, and for the auto acci- dent that ended his career prematurely at the age of 36, those numbers would have been much higher. A New Life After a ten-month hospitalization, Campanella under-went rehabilitation at New York University-Bellevue Med-ical Center’s Rusk Institute—a process as grueling as any training in his baseball career. At the end of it, he was able to move his arms, and regained partial use of his hands. The worst was not yet over. Campanella’s wife Ruthie, unable to cope with the loss of physical intimacy imposed by the accident, left him. Campanella was also forced to sell his house to cover debts incurred as a result of the ac-cident. Only three months after Campanella’s accident, his team moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Califor-nia, to become the Los Angeles Dodgers. Campanella said many years later that his one regret in life was that he wasn’t able to go with the Dodgers to their new home. But Campanella persevered, never flagging in his op-timism. He rebuilt his life, eventually marrying his nurse, and building up his liquor store business and his career as a television and radio personality. In the process of putting his life back together, Campanella became a tremendous source of inspiration to handicapped and other people around the country. As Thomas of the New York Times wrote, “his gritty determination to make a life for himself in a wheelchair won him even more fame and admiration than he had enjoyed as a baseball star.” Campanella’s many fans showed their appreciation of him on May 8, 1959 at an exhibition game at the Los An-geles Coliseum between the Dodgers and the Yankees dedicated to the former star. Over 93,000 spectators showed up, a baseball attendance record that remained unbroken at the time of Campanella’s death, more than 30 years later. At one point during the proceedings, Cam-panella was wheeled to home plate, the stadium’s lights were dimmed, and the fans lit matches in Campanella’s honor. More importantly to the star who had fallen on hard times, he netted $75,000 from that night’s proceeds. 237 Campanella Notable Sports Figures Roy Campanella, right Campanella stayed active in baseball by coaching teenagers; in 1967, he took a job coaching boys from housing projects in New York City. Many of those he coached went on to play for college and professional teams. In 1969, Campanella, again following in Jackie Robinson’s footsteps, became the second African Amer-ican to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In a speech on the occasion, he thanked Branch Rickey for starting his major league career. The Chicago Sun Times quoted Campanella, “Mr. Rickey is the one I owe every-thing to. This election completes my baseball career, and there’s nothing more I can ask in life.” But Campanella’s career in baseball was not over. In 1978, Campanella went back on the Dodgers payroll, selling his liquor store and moving to Woodland Hills, California to rejoin his old team. Among his duties at his new job was coaching Dodgers catchers at spring train-ing in Vero Beach, Florida, and working for the organi-zation’s Community Services department. He remained in the public eye with these activities, and remained beloved of Dodgers fans and players who recognized his positive outlook and ongoing contribu-tions to the sport of baseball. Most of all, he was seen to epitomize the spirit of fun that he felt was essential to playing an organized sport. “It’s a man’s game,” said Campanella, according to the St. Petersburg Times, “but you have to have a lot of little boy in you to play it.” Gone But Not Forgotten Roy Campanella died of a heart attack near his home in Woodland Hills, California, on June 26, 1993. “As well as being a great baseball player,” said Dodger man-ager Tommy Lasorda in Jet magazine, “he was a great human being.” And, as former Dodger player and later San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker recalled in the Boston Globe, Campanella “was a guy who motivat-ed me. He never complained. He would never alibi. Even though his body didn’t function well, he was men-tally as sharp as a tack. You could listen to him for hours and hours telling stories about baseball and life. Stories about Jack Robinson and Jim Gilliam and the Negro Leagues. He was just fascinating to be around.” Cam-panella is survived by his wife Roxie and five children: Roy Jr.,Anthony, John, Joni Roan, and Ruth Effort. SELECTED WRITINGS BY CAMPANELLA: It’s Good to Be Alive. Boston: Little Brown & Compa-ny, 1959. FURTHER INFORMATION Periodicals “Dodgers Legend Campanella Dies.” Chicago Sun Times (June 27, 1993): Sports Sunday, 3. 238 Notable Sports Figures Campbell Awards and Accomplishments 1949-56 Named to the Major League All-Star Team 1951, Named National League Most Valuable Player 1953, 1955 1953 Set major league record for most home runs by a catcher in a season (41) 1953 Set major league record for most runs batted in by a catcher in a season (142) 1959 Published book It’s Good to Be Alive 1969 Inducted as the second African American baseball player into the Baseball Hall of Fame Donnelly, Joe. “Courage in Dodger Blue; Baseball Mourns Campanella, 71.” Record (June 28, 1993): D1. “Greatest Dodger of Them All.” St. Petersburg Times (June 28, 1993): 1C. “Hall of Fame Catcher Roy Campanella Dies at 71.” Jet (July 12, 1993): 14. Pearson, Richard. “Famed Dodgers Catcher Roy Cam-panella Dies.” Washington Post (June 28, 1993): D8. Thomas Jr., Robert McG. “Roy Campanella, 71 Dies; Was Dodger Hall of Famer.” New York Times (June 28, 1993): B8. Whicker, Mark. “Campy: Simply One of the Best.” Buf-falo News (June 28, 1993): Sports, 2. Whiteside, Larry. “Campanella Broke Mold; Apprcia-tion.” Boston Globe (June 28, 1993): Sports, 25. Other “Biography: Roy Campanella.” HickokSports.com. http://www.hickoksports.com/biograph/campanel. shtml (November 13, 2002). “It’s Good to Be Alive.”All Movie Guide. http://www. allmovie.com (November 19, 2002). “Roy Campanella.” cnnsi.com. http://sportsillustrated. cnn.com/baseball/mlb/all_time_stats/players/c/43016 / (November 20, 2002). Sketch by Michael Belfiore Earl Campbell 1955- American football player arl Campbell’s professional career was marked by his ability to sustain a hit. He was known for his strength and the fearlessness of his play. He rose out of the ashes of poverty to become a force on the football field. He won the Heisman trophy and restored the hopes of Houston football fans when he joined the Oil- Earl Campbell ers in 1978. A small town hero in Tyler, Texas, Camp-bell had a very successful NFL career during which he amassed 9,407 rushing yards. Although he never played on a championship team or went to the Super Bowl, Campbell remains one of the best to ever play the game. Born March 29, 1955 in Tyler, Texas, Campbell was the sixth of eleven children born to Bert and Ann Campbell. His father picked roses, worked in a conve-nience store and died when Earl was eleven years old. Raised by his mother, Earl was counted on, along with his siblings, to carry a greater responsibility within the family. He discovered a love of football in the fifth grade. He was bigger and faster than the kids that he played with and idolized linebacker Dick Butkus. It wasn’t until high school that Campbell became a run-ning back, a switch he was unhappy with at first. When his coach promised him he could play both sides of the ball, Campbell embraced his new position and led his team to an undefeated season and a state championship in 1973. Campbell went on to the University of Texas in 1974. During his freshman season, he rushed for 928 yards and received the Southwest Conference Newcomer of the Year Award. He became close to his coach and men-tor, Darrell Royal, and worked as hard academically as he was athletically. “He don’t take no prisoners,” said Royal of his star running back’s style. In his sophomore 239 ... - tailieumienphi.vn