Italian /American Hall of Famer: Roy Campanella (1948-1957)

Roy Campanella was born November 19, 1921 in Philadelphia, PA. Roys father John was an Italian American of Sicilian descent. His mother Ida was African American. Roy was a star in Philadelphia high school and went to play in the Negros Leagues becoming a star for the Elite Giants. He even played in the Mexican League and became a Hall of famer there as well.

After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, Campy was next coming up to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. Campy was a much more quiet individual than Robinson, he just kept quiet and played the game well. So well he is one of the best catchers in baseball history, and a member of the Hall of Fame. He came up in 1948, at age 26 and played in 83 games batting .258 with 9 HRs & 45 RBIs.

The next season Campanella became Brooklyn’s

regular catcher for the next decade, making his first of his eight straight All Star games. He won three NL MVP Awards for the classic Boys of Summer, and set a single season record for HRs by a catcher in with 40. The record held for 43 years until it was broken by the Mets by Todd Hundley in 1996.

Also in his brief ten year career he hit over 30 HRs four times, coming in the league’s top eight five times. He drove in over 100 runs three times, coming in the top eight four times. He also hit over 20 doubles four times, and hit over .300 three times. His best season was in his 1953 MVP year, he hit those 40 HRs, led the league in RBIs with 142, which is still second most all time by a Dodger. He hit .312 with a .395 on base percentage and 26 doubles.

Campy also played in five World Series, hitting 4 HRs with 12 RBIs and a .237 average winning the Championship in 1955. When Ralph Branca threw the famous HR pitch to Bobby Thompson in the 1051 Playoff game it wasn’t Campy who called the pitch He was sitting on the bench due to an injury, and his back up, future Mets pitching coach Rube Walker waas behind the plate.

After the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1957 Campy was slated to continue as their catcher in Los Angeles. On the night of January 28, 1958 he closed down his liquor store in Harlem drove his rented car home. On the way to his home in Glen Cove, Long Island his rented car hit a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. He broke his neck, crushed two vertebrae and his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.

When he awoke, he was devastated and wanted to die. After long hard rehab, he was able to use his arms and hands again. He divorced his cheating wife and moved ahead with his life.

In May 1959, the Dodgers honored Campy on Roy Campanella Night to a record crowd of 93,103 at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The Dodgers played an exhibition game against their long time rivals, that AL team from New York. In an emotional entrance, Brooklyn team Captain Pee Wee Reese wheeled out Campanella in his wheel chair to a dark Colesium only lit by hundreds of thousands of candles. An unbelievable scene.

He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1969 and had his number 39, retired by the Dodgers in 1972. He worked in various jobs in the Dodgers organization moving to L.A. in 1978. He appeared at many baseball events and television shows like Lassie, What’s My Line & a biographical movie about his life. He passed away a legend, in 1993 of a heart attack at age 71.