“Campy” was a born leader. He was captain of every team he played on in high school. That leadership made him the great catcher he was. Known for many things, catcher was what he was. His natural talent of handling pitchers ended up with his catching three no-hitters. What made him so feared as a catcher was his remarkable ability to throw out runners. His percentage was 57%. That meant that more than one out of every two who tried to run on him got thrown out. That 57% is a record that still stands. What is the average for a major league catcher? Thirty percent (30%)!

As I said, Roy Campanella was the kind of player that entranced kids like me. I even played catcher until a defective mask shattered when hit with a foul ball. It ripped open my mouth and killed a tooth. 

There were several Campanellas to watch during a game.  One was the ball vacuum. Campanella was a determined dart chasing a foul ball. The ball had two choices—the seats or his glove. Sometimes he’d crash into the backstop trying to will his arms and his legs to be longer so he could snatch the ball off the lip of the screen. When he’d fail, that led to the next Campanella, the sailor. Well, a catcher with the mouth of a sailor.

Man, could that man curse. The first time I sat so close to the field that I could feel the heat being generated from his body. The ball eluded his grasp.  I was hit with a tsunami of words. Some I’d never heard before, some were strung together like poetry. His cursing was an art form.

Handling pitchers brought us a Roy with a split personality. He could gentle a pitcher like a horse whisper could an edgy horse. A word here, a pat there, sometimes a story that had nothing to do with the game, designed to get the pitcher’s mind off the mound and out of Ebbet’s Field for a moment– another art form. 

Sal Maglie once said of Campanella’s game-calling that Campanella called the pitches and , “All I had to do was confirm the sign and throw.”

But sometimes, another guy showed up. This was a guy who was mightily ticked off at his pitcher. Misread signs, lapses of judgment on the mound, or fielding a play. That pitcher got straightened out but quickly. The riot act was what he got. It was like the farmer who explained why he hit the mule on the head. He said, “First, I have to get its attention…” There was that attention-getting Campanella.

If you were a Dodger fan, it wasn’t hard to remember when he stole a base because there were so few attempts. In 1,401 hits over his decade-plus long career, he stole 34 bases. No Robinson nor Wills was he. But there’s one attempt that sticks in my mind. I was at a game when Campy actually succeeded in such an exploit. His success was so obvious because the shortstop was still in the air when Campanella ceased trundling and finally slid into 2nd base, raising a Saharan dust storm around him. Yet, he was called out by, I believe, an old-timer named Augie Guglielmo, a hated Ebbet’s Field figure. 

Sometimes it’s not great to be a kid. A din arose from the stands. It turned into a roar. Tens of thousands of fans looked like they were going to have a stroke, and the others were screaming bloody murder. Yelling, hootin’, hollering, and waves of curses came coursing out of the stands down onto the field. The “irates” began throwing things too, a rain shower of beer cans empty and full, bags of peanuts in varying degrees of full fell from the sky. Then they began stomping on walkways. The sound was deafening. I kid you not, the stadium began to vibrate. Suddenly I was scared to death. There were no instant replays. The call stood. I seem to recall Campanella trotting to the dugout towards the howling mob of, “I’ll go to my grave loving you” fans with a sly, “You can lose and still win” smirk on his face.

A word about the career-ending accident. Most ballplayers had second jobs. There were no million-dollar bonus babies; in fact, the day of the $100,000 contract hadn’t arrived. Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial, Ted Williams were the elite few. Campy, known to be grumpy, pushed through his fan base probably so he could get to work on time, bolted from the side door and rumbled towards the parking lot. He had to get to Harlem where he managed a liquor store. From Harlem, when his shift was over, he schlepped home to Glen Cove, Long Island. Almost home, his car hit a slick of black ice. A worthy of the movies crash. The result was paralysis from the shoulders down. Though he filled many slots in the administration of the team, he would never again be a ballplayer.

A final nibble for thought. Roy Campanella’s highest salary was $36,000, lower than Robinson’s, Hodges’, and Snider’s, all of whom were below $50,000. He was well into his wheelchair retirement when his teammates Drysdale and Koufax stunned baseball with a contract hold out that netted them both $100,000. Chew on that while thinking about who makes what now.

So, November 19th marks his birthday. Happy Birthday Campy — and may you continue to rest in peace!

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