Baseball Mitt

The baseball mitt of Roy Campanella takes on special meaning, when you consider he’s one of the two most widely-regarded catchers of all time. These two include Yogi Berra and Roy Campanella. Roy Campanella’s baseball mitt is like gold. Each of these players was a fine defensive player, each hit with power, and each was voted his league’s Most Valuable Player three times in the first half of the decade. Campanella was born in 1921 in Philadelphia and got his first professional experience playing in the Negro League, where he was watched covetously by scouts for the big-league clubs—clubs that were still unwilling to break the odious color barrier that was keeping blacks out of organized ball.

Campanella’s baseball mitt made history in 1946 when Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers began the dismantling of the color barrier in baseball when Jackie Robinson went to Montreal. Campanella and Don Newcombe were signed to contracts and assigned to the Class B Nashua team in the New England League. The following year, when Robinson became the first black to play in the major leagues, Roy was playing for Montreal. Although he was obviously big-league material, his promotion to the Dodgers was delayed for a few months in 1948 because Rickey wanted Roy to integrate the American Association with Brooklyn’s St Paul club.

Softening Baseball Mitt

Campanella and his baseball mitt joined the Dodgers in Brooklyn and his genial personality, his flawless professionalism behind the plate, and the thunder in his bat made him an instant and permanent favorite in Ebbets Field. Roy’s greatest year was 1953, when he set records for catchers with 41 home runs and 142 runs batted in. When Johnny Bench bettered both of those marks in 1970, he did so while playing some of his games in the outfield. Campanella was the Rock of Gibraltar on the great Dodger teams of the 1950s, his squat, powerful body behind the plate provided a world of reassurance for the team. Most catchers’ visits to the mound were routine. But when Campy came out to talk to you, he made the pitcher feel better and more confident. A few months after his 36th birthday, Campanella was in a car accident that left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It is a strong possibility that had this not happened, Campanella and not Frank Robinson might have been major-league baseball’s first black manager.