'Roy Campanella' (
November 19,
1921 –
June 26,
1993), nicknamed "'Campy'", was an
American baseball player — primarily at the position of
catcher — in the
Negro Leagues and
Major League Baseball. He was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Widely considered to have been one of the greatest catchers in the history of the game
[1], Campanella played for the
Brooklyn Dodgers during the
1940s and
1950s, as one of the pioneers in breaking the
color barrier in Major League Baseball. His
Hall of Fame career was cut short in
1958 when he was
paralyzed in an
automobile accident.
Playing career
Negro League
Campanella's father was of
Italian descent; his mother was
African American. Therefore, he was
barred from
Major League Baseball prior to
1947 — the season that non-white players were admitted to the Major Leagues for the first time since the
19th Century. Campanella began playing
Negro League baseball for the
Washington Elite Giants in 1937, at the age of 15. The Elite Giants would move to Baltimore the following year
[1], and Campanella would go on to become a star player with the team. He also spent some time playing
Mexican League baseball.
Minor league
In
1946, Campanella moved into the
Brooklyn Dodgers'
minor league system, as the Dodger organization began preparations to break the Major Leagues' color barrier with
Jackie Robinson. For the 1946 season, Robinson was assigned to the
Montreal Royals, the Dodgers' affiliate in the Class AAA
International League. Meanwhile, the team looked to assign Campanella to a Class B league. After the general manager of the Danville Dodgers of the
Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League reported that he did not feel that league ready for
racial integration, the organization sent Campanella, along with pitcher
Don Newcombe to the
Nashua Dodgers of the Class B
New England League, where the Dodgers felt the racial climate would be more tolerant. The Nashua team thus became the first professional baseball team to field a racially integrated lineup in the United States in the 20th Century.
Campanella's 1946 season proceeded largely without racial incident, and in one game Campanella took over the managerial duties after manager
Walter Alston was ejected. This made Campanella the first
African-American to manage white players on an organized professional baseball team. Nashua was three runs down at the time Campanella took over. They came back to win, in part due to Campanella's decision to use Newcombe as a pinch hitter in the seventh inning. Newcombe hit a game-tying two-run home run.
Major League
Jackie Robinson's first season in the Major Leagues came in 1947, and Campanella began his Major League career with the Brooklyn Dodgers the following season. Campanella's first game was on
April 20,
1948. He went on to play for the Dodgers from
1948 through
1957 as their regular catcher. In 1948, he had three different uniform numbers (33, 39, and 56) before settling down to number 39 for the rest of his career.
Campanella played in the
All-Star Game every year from
1949 through
1956. His 1949 All-Star selection made him one of the first four African-Americans so honored. (Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe and
Larry Doby were also All-Stars in 1949.)
[2] Campanella received the
Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in the
National League three times: in
1951,
1953, and
1955. In each of his MVP seasons, he batted over .300, hit over 30 home runs and had over 100 runs batted in.
In 1953, Campanella hit 40 home runs in games in which he appeared as a catcher, a record that lasted until
1996, when it was broken by
Todd Hundley. It was also this feat which earned Campanella a mention in
Billy Joel's history-themed song "
We Didn't Start the Fire".
In 1955, Campanella's third MVP season helped propel Brooklyn to its long-awaited first-ever
World Series Championship. After the Dodgers dropped the first two games of
that year's World Series to the Yankees, Campanella began Brooklyn's comeback by hitting a two-out, two-run home run in the first inning of Game 3. The Dodgers won that game, got another home run from Campanella in a Game 4 victory that tied the series, and then went on to claim the series in seven games.
After the
1957 season, the Brooklyn Dodgers relocated to
Los Angeles, California, and became the Los Angeles Dodgers, but Campanella's playing career came to an end before he ever played a game there.
Auto accident
Campanella lived in
Long Island while owning a liquor store in
Harlem, which he also operated during the baseball off-season. On
January 28,
1958, after closing the store for the night, he began his drive home to Long Island. However, before he arrived, his car hit a patch of ice, skidded into a telephone pole and overturned.
The accident left Campanella paralyzed from the chest down. Through physical therapy, he eventually was able to gain substantial use of his arms and hands. He was able to feed himself, shake hands, and gesture while speaking, but he would be confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life.
Baseball honors
In
May 1959, the Dodgers, then playing their second season in
Los Angeles, honored Campanella with ''Roy Campanella Night'' at the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The
New York Yankees agreed to make a special trip to Los Angeles to play an exhibition game against the Dodgers for the occasion. The attendance at the game was 93,103, still the largest crowd ever to attend a Major League Baseball game. The Yankees won the game, 6-2.
In
1969, Campanella was inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame, the second player of African American heritage so honored, after
Jackie Robinson.
On
June 4,
1972, the Dodgers retired Campanella's uniform number 39 alongside Robinson's (42) and
Sandy Koufax's (32).
In an article in
Esquire magazine in 1976, sportswriter Harry Stein published an article called the "All Time All-Star Argument Starter," a list of five ethnic baseball teams. Campanella was the catcher on Stein's
black team.
In
1999, Campanella ranked number 50 on ''
The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was a nominee for the
Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Post-playing career
After his playing career, Campanella remained involved with the Dodgers. He attended the team's annual
spring training in
Vero Beach, Florida, serving each year as a mentor and coach to young catchers in the Dodger organization. In
1978, he moved to
California and took a job as assistant to the Dodgers' director of community relations, Campanella's former teammate and longtime friend Don Newcombe.
In
1993, Campanella died of a
heart attack at his home in
Woodland Hills, California. He was interred in the
Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in
Los Angeles.
His widow, Roxie, died of
cancer in
2004.
In
2006, Campanella was featured on a
United States postage stamp [3]. The stamp is one of a block of four honoring baseball sluggers, the others being
Mickey Mantle,
Hank Greenberg, and
Mel Ott.
In September 2006, the
Los Angeles Dodgers announced the creation of the Roy Campanella Award, which is voted among the club's players and coaches and is given to the Dodger who best exemplifies "Campy's" spirit and leadership. Shortstop
Rafael Furcal was named the inaugural winner of the award.
Personal life
Campanella was married three times. He married Bernice Ray in 1939, with whom he had two daughters. They divorced a few years later. On April 30, 1945, he married Ruthe Willis. They had three children. Their marriage was never the same after he was paralyzed, though. They separated in 1960 and Ruthe died in January of 1963. On May 5, 1964, Campanella married Roxie Doles, who survived him in death.
Books
The book '' (2004) includes short stories from former Dodger pitcher
Carl Erskine. Campanella is prominent in many of these stories.
In October 2006,
Simon & Schuster announced plans to publish a new biography of Campanella to be written by
Neil Lanctot, author of ''Negro League Baseball - The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution''.
''It's Good to Be Alive''
Campanella himself authored the inspirational book '''It’s Good to Be Alive''', which details his journey back from the near-fatal car accident that left him paralyzed. The book mentions the years of tireless efforts by physical therapist Sam Brockington which allowed Campanella to regain some use of his arms, eventually overcome his initial bitterness about his fate, and finally adopt an optimistic outlook on life.
Michael Landon made his TV-movie directorial debut in the
1974 movie ''It’s Good to Be Alive'', in which Campanella was portrayed by
Paul Winfield.
See also
★
Top 500 home run hitters of all time
★
List of Major League Baseball RBI champions
★
Major League Baseball hitters with three home runs in one game
References
1. All-time unpredictable fantasy leaguers
Sources
★ Campanella, Roy. ''It's Good to Be Alive'', New York: Little Brown and Co., 1959
★ Daly, Steve. ''Dem Little Bums: The Nashua Dodgers'', Concord, NH: Plaidswede Publishing, 2002
★ Greenfield, Steven, "
Roy Campanella", BaseballLibrary.com
★ Roper, Scott C., and Stephanie Abbot Roper. "'We're Going to Give All We Have for this Grand Little Town': Baseball Integration and the 1946 Nashua Dodgers" ''Historical New Hampshire'', Spring/Summer, 1998
★ Tygiel, Jules. ''Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy'', New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997
★ Young, A.S. (Andrew Sturgeon). ''Great Negro Baseball Stars, and How They Made the Major Leagues'', New York:
A. S. Barnes, 1953.
External links
★
★
Hall of Fame profile
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