Roy Campanella

[edit] Playing career

[edit] 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,[3] and Campanella would go on to become a star player with the team.


[edit] Mexican league
In 1942 Campanella played in the Mexican League with the Sultanes of Monterrey, Lazaro Salazar manager of Sultanes told him that we would play one day at the major league level. In 1971 he was elected to the Mexican League Hall Of Fame.[citation needed]


[edit] 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.


[edit] 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.)[4] 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. His 142 RBIs in 1953 broke the franchise record of 130, which had been held by Jack Fournier (1925) and Babe Herman (1930). Today it is the second-most in franchise history, Tommy Davis breaking it with 153 RBIs in 1962. That same year 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.

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 for Los Angeles.


[edit] Automobile accident
Campanella lived in Glen Cove, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, while owning a liquor store in Harlem which he also operated during the baseball off-season and between games. On January 28, 1958, after closing the store for the night, he began his drive to his home in Glen Cove. En route, traveling at about 30 m.p.h., his car (a rented 1957 Chevrolet sedan) hit a patch of ice, skidded into a telephone pole and overturned, breaking Campanella's neck. He fractured the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae and compressed the spinal cord.[5][6]

The accident left Campanella paralyzed from the shoulders down.[5] Through physical therapy, he eventually was able to gain substantial use of his arms and hands.[7] He was able to feed himself, shake hands, and gesture while speaking, but he would require a wheelchair for mobility for the remainder of his life.


[edit] Post-playing career

Willie Mays with Roy Campanella (1961)After his playing career, Campanella remained involved with the Dodgers. In January 1959 the Dodgers named him assistant supervisor of scouting for the eastern part of the United States and special coach the team's annual spring training camp in Vero Beach, Florida, serving each year as a mentor and coach to young catchers in the Dodger organization.[8] 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.


[edit] Honors and tribute

Roy Campanella's number 39 was retired by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972
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 Yankees won the game, 6-2. The attendance at the game was 93,103, setting a record at that time for the largest crowd to attend a Major League Baseball game.

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.

In 2006, Campanella was featured on a United States postage stamp.[9] 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.


[edit] 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 and had three children together, though their relationship deteriorated after his accident. They separated in 1960 and Ruthe died in January 1963. On May 5, 1964, Campanella married Roxie Doles, who survived him.

Campanella died of a heart attack on June 26, 1993, in his Woodland Hills, California home.[2][10] He was cremated by the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles[11]. His widow, Roxie, died of cancer in 2004.


[edit] Books
The book Carl Erskine's Tales from the Dodgers Dugout: Extra Innings (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.


[edit] 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.


[edit] Television