For baseball icon and Philly native Roy Campanella, fame far and wide, but little recognition here at home

Roy Campanella, the Hall of Fame catcher who grew up in the Nicetown neighborhood of Philadelphia, was born more than 100 years ago, yet there are no baseball fields, playgrounds, schools, or streets in the city named after him.

Besides earning the National League Most Valuable Player award — three times — “Campy” was such a pioneer for civil rights, and, later in life, for those with disabilities, that it is unfathomable that he merits merely a modest Pennsylvania historical marker outside Simon Gratz High School Mastery Charter and a painting on the suite level at Citizens Bank Park. Campanella died of a heart attack at age 71 on June 26, 1993, but it is never too late to re-honor a civic treasure. He spent his entire big-league career with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but he was born and bred in Philly.

And, truth be told, Philly did not make it easy for Campy. His father, John, was a produce dealer and a descendant of Italian immigrants; his mother, Ida, was African American. Nicetown was ethnically mixed in the 1920s and 1930s, but the kids in the neighborhood would taunt him by calling him “half-breed.”

“Yes, your daddy’s white and I’m colored, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” his mother told him. “You’re just as good as anybody else, and don’t you ever forget it.”

What Roy Campanella loved — and was especially good at — was playing baseball. He was a prodigy, standing out as a young teenager on Philadelphia-area diamonds before he dropped out of Gratz on his 16th birthday in 1937 to play in the Negro Leagues. The color line in the big leagues excluded biracial ballplayers, too.

This hurt. As a youngster, Campanella enjoyed going to Philadelphia Athletics games at what was then called Shibe Park, less than two miles from his home at 1528 Kerbaugh St., a two-story brown-brick rowhouse that appeared recently to be undergoing renovation.

Campanella was a standout catcher, earning $60 a month for the Baltimore Elite Giants, but he really wanted to play baseball for the Phillies or A’s, the two big-league teams in his hometown. He even pursued a tryout with the then-forlorn Phillies early in World War II.

And, the often-told story goes, the Phillies were interested in this robust catcher with the Italian last name until they found out his mother was Black. And their interest in him stopped there. (The Phillies, embarrassingly, would not sign their first Black player until 1957.)

“When I went to Shibe Park and tried to go through the door, the fella at the gate said, ‘There must be some mistake. We didn’t send for you,’” Campanella recalled in a 1989 interview with the Daily News. “My parents called Jerry Nugent, the owner, and he tried to explain about the unwritten rule that no Blacks were on the team or invited to participate.”

Campy, however, also drew the interest of Branch Rickey, the groundbreaking Brooklyn Dodgers executive. Though he was 24 and had played nine grueling seasons in the Negro Leagues when the Dodgers signed him before the 1946 season, Campanella was a sturdy, nimble catcher with power. He was easy-going and well-liked, a calming influence on pitchers.

Campanella was one of five Negro League prospects signed by Rickey, the most notable being a California kid, all-around athlete, and U.S. Army veteran named Jack Roosevelt Robinson. Campy excelled for two seasons in the Dodgers’ farm system.

Jackie Robinson had one historic year of big-league experience when the Dodgers called up Campanella early in the 1948 season, making him the first Black catcher in the major leagues. Campanella would say, “I ain’t no pioneer. I’m a ballplayer.”

Campanella became one of Brooklyn’s immortal “Boys of Summer,” batting .276 and swatting 242 home runs over a big-league career that lasted nearly 10 full seasons. The Dodgers won five National League pennants, and a world championship in 1955 when they beat the New York Yankees after World Series losses. Campy was a seven-time all-star.

When the Dodgers tried checking into the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia on a 1948 road trip, they were told their Black players were not welcome. So the team moved to the Warwick Hotel — and Campanella and Robinson stayed at his home on Kerbaugh Street.

Campanella had just turned 36 and was preparing to move with the Dodgers to Los Angeles on Jan. 28, 1958, when the car he was driving from his liquor store in Harlem hit a patch of ice and skidded into a telephone pole on Long Island, paralyzing him permanently. His playing career was over. He became a scout for the Dodgers, then a goodwill ambassador.

Campy, who was married three times and was the father of five children, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. A made-for-TV biopic, It’s Good to Be Alive, with Paul Winfield as Campanella, appeared in 1974. I remember Campanella the retired ballplayer as pleasant and even-tempered, positive and gracious — a champion for the disabled.

“I would agree that he does deserve to be remembered much more, not just as one of the first crop of pioneers who integrated MLB, but also as a disability advocate who went ‘public’ with his quadriplegia at a time when it was usually hidden,” Neil Lanctot, who wrote the 2012 biography Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella, told me recently.

Dedicating the block of Kerbaugh Street where Campanella grew up would be a nice way of honoring his memory. If Jackie Robinson can have a mural here — his is on the side of a three-story house at 2803 N. Broad St., not far from Shibe Park — Campy can have one, too.

His historical marker at Simon Gratz, erected in 1996, is overwhelmed by large red signs outside the school, one of which honors Rasheed Wallace, a Gratz alum who became an NBA star. He earned it.

Even though he insisted he was a ballplayer and no pioneer, Roy Campanella, from just around the corner, is also Philly sports royalty.

Dave Caldwell lives in Manayunk. He grew up in Lancaster County, graduated from Temple, and was a sports reporter for The Inquirer from 1986 to 1995.