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Roy Campanella showed up in the Brooklyn Dodgers' spring training camp in 1948 and pronounced the best catcher in all of baseball by Branch Rickey. Then Rickey sent Campanella (Campy) to Saint Paul's team in the American Association to break the color barrier in that league.
Today, an ballplayer with Campanella's skill would be seeking free agency and making millions, not shrugging his shoulders over accepting an assignment in the Minor Leagues. But in 1948, Roy Campanella was an African American who toiled in the Negro Leagues, praying for someone to be brave enough to desegregate Major League Baseball.
Born in 1921, Campy grew up in Philadelphia, spending his free time on the streets playing baseball and stickball. Free time was minimal, however. Like many children living through the Depression, he worked to help his family. At age twelve, Roy delivered milk at three a.m. and had to make sure he was home by five so that he could help load up the family truck with the vegetables his father sold. When that chore was done, he cleaned up and hurried off to school. After school he sold newspapers or shined shoes, whatever he could do to earn extra money.
At fourteen, while playing ball with men in their twenties, he attracted the attention of a Negro League scout and after a two-game stint with the Bacharach Giants (a semi-pro team), he signed with the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro League. In 1936, it was as close to the Major Leagues as Campy could hope to come. Even so, he was a professional baseball player and he had not even celebrated his fifteenth birthday.
Campy saw baseball as a unique way to earn money. He took every advantage possible to make baseball profitable. He played winter ball in Puerto Rico and Cuba and spent the summer season with Baltimore. When he thought he had been unreasonably fined for playing in an all-star game that would have have paid twice his monthly salary, Roy joined a league in Mexico. He played there for two years, returning to Baltimore only after the fine was dropped. By the time he was twenty-four, Campy was a ten-year veteran, making $5,000 a year as one of the highest-paid players in the Negro Leagues.
Although the leagues were segregated, they did play against each other in exhibition games. During one of these games, Branch Rickey who ran the Dodgers offered Campy a contract. Thinking it was for another Negro League team, Campy turned it down. Talking to Jackie Robinson later, he found out that Robinson was also offered a contract -- for the actual Brooklyn Dodgers. Campanella had the chance to right his mistake, and shortly afterwards signed his own contract with the Dodgers.
Due to the tensions caused by Robinson's debut with the team, Campanella was sent to the Dodgers' Class B team in Danville, Illinois. However, the Danville team turned him down. Other teams also turned down Campy, until finally, the Nashua, New Hampshire, team agreed to give him a chance.
Wherever Campanella played, he became a ground-breaker, and not only because of his skin color. He truly was an outstanding ballplayer -- one of the best catchers ever to play the game -- but also an outstanding human being. Through his hard work and dedication, he earned the respect of his teammates, fans, and opposing players at a time when people naturally hated men based on skin color. He was secure enough in himself and his talent to look past the prejudices he encountered. But then, he probably never thought about it. As a child he was teased about being a half-breed. One day, he went to his mother and asked, "Is it true that my daddy is a white man?" He had honestly never noticed. His mother told him yes, but that it didn't matter what his dad's skin color was because his father was a good, loving, hard-working man. As an adult, that was how Campy judged everyone he met.
Early in the morning of January 28, 1958, Campy was driving home from New York City where he had been for a charity appearance. His car hit a patch of ice and rammed into a telephone pole. Campy's neck hit the dashboard, and he ended up jackknifed on the floor. He tried to turn off the engine but realized with horror that his arms could not move. He was paralyzed.
Obviously, his baseball playing career was over, but he did eventually return to the Dodger's organization as a coach. In 1969, he was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Until his death in the early 90s, Campanella never forgot how very precious life is.
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