Big Man from Nicetown

(See Cover) His legs are buckled into clumsy shin guards; his face is hidden by the metal grille of a heavy mask. Behind him, vague and impersonal, rises the roar of the crowd. His chest is covered with a corrugated protective pad, and his big mitt is thrust out as if to fend off destruction. Exactly 60 ft. 6 in. straight ahead of him, the pitcher looms preternaturally large on his mound of earth. As he crouches close to the ground, his field of vision gives him his own special view of the vast ballpark. The white foul lines stretch to the distant fences; the outfielders seem to be men without legs. Between him and the flycatchers, from the far outfield grass to the brown base paths, the rest of the team twitches nervously in place. In a sense, the game belongs to him. He is the catcher.

The once-a-week ball fan may think of the catcher merely as a target for the pitcher to shoot at. Actually, the job is the most demanding in baseball. A good catcher must be able to take punishment. Foul tips batter his hands; the batter's big club swishes past his skull; base runners hit him with intent to maim as they slide for home. Through it all he must use his head, for he is baseball's tactical commander, its platoon leader. He must watch the signs according to the batter, the score, the inning. He must hide his own signals from the runner on second, check his fielders as they shift position, be ever alert for the hit-and-run--the dangerous play that can be stopped before it starts by a catcher calling for a pitchout.

No active player in American baseball fills that formidable job better than a burly, bulging (5 ft. 9 in., 205 Ibs.), cocoa-colored catcher named Roy Campanella, currently enjoying one of the best seasons of his long career on the best team in baseball.

Heart of the Team. On the bench, ruminating over a cud of tobacco, the Brooklyn Dodgers' Catcher Campanella is the picture of tranquillity. He never makes an unnecessary move. Take away the uniform, and he would look for all the world like a displaced Buddha in calm contemplation. But the fans sit up when he waddles to his place behind the plate. A remarkable transformation takes place: the somnolent bulk becomes a quick and agile athlete. After he has strapped on the "tools of ignorance,"* hunkered down in the close confines of the modern catcher's box, he is the heart of the team. The pitcher waits for his signals. (Earlier, team and manager have talked over opposing batters, come to some tentative conclusions about strategy.) Campy calls for the curve or the fast ball, the change-up or the slider. It is a rare event when the man on the mound shakes him off, i.e., refuses his signal. By now most Dodger pitchers, reveling this week in an unbeatable 13 1/2-game lead in the National League, know that their catcher knows best.

Squeaking with enthusiasm, Campy keeps a chatter of encouragement flowing back to the pitcher. "Come on, roomie," he will holler at his road-trip roommate, Don Newcombe. "Hum that pea." Neither Newk nor anyone else is permitted a moment's carelessness. Once, when Don Newcombe crossed up his catcher with a slow curve after taking the signal for a fast ball, Roy promptly flipped off his mask and padded out to the mound. "How come you give me the local when I call for the express?" he demanded in singsong irritation. Campy believes that his chatter helps. Says he: "You shouldn't be a dead pants out there."

All Pre-Advance. All the while, going through his acrobatic gyrations--lunging for bad pitches, darting like a great cat after well-dropped bunts, settling under pop fouls or wheeling and firing to pick a man off base--Campy keeps the good catcher's track of every aspect of the game. It takes a hog-wild pitcher to whip a ball out of Campanella's reach, or stick a pitch in the dirt that he cannot dig out. "I line up my body for the way it's coming in," he says, "and jump if it's too much outside. I do it all pre-advance. It might be easier just to stick out the glove like most of them, but you might get the wrong tendency. If you keep moving every day, you'll get in the right habit."

Never has a catcher kept moving as much as Campy. In 19 years of active play, he has caught nearly 3,000 games. For nearly six years he survived a man-killing, year-round schedule--Negro leagues in the summer, tropical ball in the winter. In rickety buses he rattled across the Midwest and the Central American mountains, playing for peanuts, but always playing well. During seven seasons as a Dodger regular he has cheerfully suffered an extraordinary collection of broken bones, beanballs and assorted bruises. He has learned his trade so well that today oldtimers rank him with the best ever, with Bill Dickey and "Gabby" Hartnett, "Mickey" Cochrane and Roger Bresnahan.

End to Tragedy? Somewhere in their vast farm system, the Dodgers feel sure, they have a replacement for their tiring third baseman, Jackie Robinson, for their spry but elderly (36) captain and shortstop, Pee Wee Reese. When the time comes, they may even be able to turn up another outfielder almost as good as Duke Snider. But a substitute for Campy is a dream. To Dodger rooters. 1955 is the year of destiny, and destiny has the bulky shape of Roy Campanella.

Brooklyn teams have always had a special genius for blowing ball games in a thousand different ways. Brooklyn ball fans grew up with the Daffiness Boys and their bonehead base running of the '20s. They remember a rooter who turned murderer with rage over a loss to the Giants, a minister praying vainly for victory (1946--the Cardinals won the pennant) on the steps of Borough Hall, Catcher Mickey Owen dropping a third strike and losing a championship. With the inevitability of Greek tragedy, the beloved Bums were often contenders, sometimes won pennants and never won a World Series.

From the first, this year promised to be different. The Dodgers started so fast that the whole league has been chasing them hopelessly ever since. With a ten-game and an eleven-game winning streak, they racked up the big lead that they have been hanging on to steadily. They have been equal to all their troubles. Out of long experience. Manager Walter ("Smokey") Alston knew just how to discipline Big Don Newcombe when he kicked up a fuss about pitching batting practice (TIME, May 23); Big Newk has been pitching (18 won, i lost) and hitting (.376 at week's end) with astonishing skill ever since. With Pee Wee Reese, Junior Gilliam and Carl Furillo all doing their share, there is hardly a chance that the team can pick up its old habit of relaxing and folding in the stretch. Above all, Campy is back in shape. For two weeks the Dodgers fretted while he recovered from a loose bone spur in his knee; now he functions with his old, Buddha's efficiency. Last week he was back behind the plate to help a couple of rookie pitchers, Don Bessent and Roger Craig, hold off the opposition and give the Dodgers' sore-armed veterans a rest. At bat, he is once more teaming up with Centerfielder Duke Snider to make one of the toughest one-two hitting combinations since Ruth and Gehrig. Campy settles into the batter's box with sure confidence--legs spread, left foot in the bucket so that he is half facing the pitcher--and he rattles out base hits, and moves with the swift authority that is the secret dream of American youth.

Up from the Milk Route. Roy Campanella has been nurturing that dream ever since he was 15, when he started playing baseball for pay in a North Phil adelphia neighborhood known as Nicetown, where he was born 34 years ago. From his Sicilian father, piano-legged Roy inherited his proportions and a capacity for enjoying hard work. While he supported a wife and five hungry kids on the pro ceeds of a vegetable wagon. John Cam panella still managed to save enough cash to chip in with his brothers and open a chain of neighborhood groceries. From his Negro mother. Roy learned piety. Al though his father was a Roman Catholic, his mother took him to Baptist church, raised him on the precepts of the 23rd Psalm. Today. Campy sees nothing un usual in the fact that he sends his own old est son to a Presbyterian Sunday school simply because it fields a smart "Little League" baseball team.

As a roly-poly youngster. Campy sold newspapers, cut grass, shined shoes. Mornings he got up at 2:30 to help his older brother Lawrence run a milk route. By 5:30 he was back in bed; at 8 he was on his way to school. Always, young Roy's income was turned over to his mother, and always, his allowance was spent on movies or a ball game. Shibe Park (now Connie Mack Stadium) was within walk ing distance of the Campanella home, and any afternoon there was a game. Roy was there, too. For a quarter a kid could get an unofficial bleachers seat on the roof of one of the houses adjoining the field.

Most kids on the narrow Nicetown streets played a form of stickball; not Roy Campanella. His big hands felt awk ward on a slim broomstick. He played honest sand-lot baseball with the Nicetown Colored Athletic Club or the Nicetown Giants. Soon he was good enough for American Legion ball with Loudenslager Post No. 366.

Campy was not much of a hitter in those days, but he made the most of the gifts he had. In the spring of 1936. the baseball coach at Elizabeth Gillespie Junior High School put out a call for candidates. The best boys would be allowed to play for nearby Simon Gratz High School.

Campy watched his buddies gather into separate groups, one for pitchers, one for infielders. one for outfielders. No one moved to the catcher's circle. Then and there, he made up his mind. Why ask for competition? He would be a catcher.

Crazy Schedules. Campy was only 15 when the owner of the Bacharach Giants, an all-Negro semi-pro team, offered Mrs.' Campanella $353 week for her son's serv ices on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sun days. Mrs. Campanella boggled at the idea of Sabbath baseball, agreed only when the Bacharachs' owner promised that wher ever the team was playing, he himself would take Roy to church on Sunday.

No sooner was Campy squared away with the Bacharach Giants than he was hired away by the Washington Elite Giants (which later became the Baltimore Elite Giants). One afternoon the Elite manager gave Campy a uniform to try on and whisked him off to a game in Norristown, Pa. Before long, Campy quit high school and went barnstorming with the Elites from New York to Kansas City, following the crazy, mixed-up schedules of the Negro leagues.

No Play, No Pay. Before the major leagues started to siphon off their stars, the Negro circuits had enough good players to fill a Negro-American and National League. From May to October the "bus" leagues zigzagged across the U.S. Their buses were rolling dormitories: seats, aisles and luggage racks did double duty as beds. Often there was no time for a meal stop, and sometimes no restaurant would serve a colored team. Then the players would carve up a big bologna and make sandwiches as they rolled along. Eating money, when Campy started out, was 50-c- a day.

When he was not catching, Campy played the outfield or pitched; the trick was to stay in the line-up at any cost. "Since there was no trainer to tell us when we got hurt, a man kept playing as long as he could stand up," Campy remembers. "You had to. You got paid if you played. There were no averages kept in those days. You couldn't go up to the boss and say 'Look here, I'm hitting .350, so how about a raise?' All you could do was make sure you played every day."

Caribbean Winters. For all their long season, the rough-and-ready Negro leagues could not keep Campy busy enough, and he took to spending his winters playing Caribbean baseball. Latin embellishments added much to the color, if not the caliber of the game. Puerto Rican fans passed the hat for him when he hit a pair of home runs; Campy returned the kindness by distributing a 100-lb. bag of potatoes in the slums. In Mexico he learned all the things that could happen to a baseball in thin mountain air. "You could hit a ball nine miles, but the running was awful. The pitchers couldn't curve the ball, either."

One night in Caracas, Campy remembers with glee, Pitcher Saul Rogovin (now with the Philadelphia Phillies) decided that he was not in the mood to work. His manager thought otherwise and sent him to the mound. To prove his point, Rogovin promptly walked the first four batters. Furious at this insubordination, the manager called the cops and Pitcher Rogovin was marched off to the local jail.

Enter Mr. Rickey. In those days, the Negro leagues had a standard gag: a report that a scout from a major-league club was in the stands. It was a bitter joke, because Negro players had not yet been accepted by the majors. One cold October day in 1945, after a team of Negro All-Stars had been whipped by a collection of big-leaguers, Dodger Coach Chuck Dressen cornered Campy outside Newark's Ruppert Stadium. He told Campanella that Branch Rickey, then the Dodgers' president, wanted to see him. Campy went along with what he thought must surely be a gag. But next day in the Dodgers' Brooklyn office he was scowled at; whispered to, thundered at, gently praised, scathingly questioned. "Mr. Rickey had me buffaloed," he recalls with awe. Asked about his weight, he answered that he was pushing about 215. "Judas priest!" Rickey roared. "You can't weigh that much and play ball!" Said Campy: "All I know is I've been doin' it every day for years."

Finally Rickey waved his unlit cigar and came to the point: How would Mr. Campanella like to join the Brooklyn organization? There was a rumor going around that Rickey was forming a Negro league, and Campy, wanting no part of the prospective Brown Dodgers, turned Rickey down cold. A few days later, he found himself in a gin rummy game with another Negro ballplayer named Jackie Robinson, 1938-40 topflight halfback for U.C.L.A. Robby came out with big news: he, too, had an offer from Rickey and he had signed--not for the Brown Dodgers, but to play with the Montreal Royals of the International League. He was about to become the first Negro to break into organized baseball. "I could have kicked my butt," says Campy now. But his own chance was to come.

"I'll Beat You to a Pulp." In March 1946, in response to an urgent telegram from Rickey, Campy came home from the winter games in Venezuela and reported to Brooklyn.There were still a few Dodger farmclub managers who wanted no part of a Negro player. But that spring, while Jackie Robinson drew most of the attention and most of the attacks, Roy Campanella and a promising Negro pitcher named Don Newcombe quietly reported to the Dodgers' Class B ball club in Nashua, N.H. Their new manager: long-legged, schoolmasterish Walter Alston. They liked him on sight.

Before they left for Nashua, Campy and Newk got a long lecture from Rickey, filled with colorful descriptions of the insults they might get. As it turned out, there was little trouble: both Campy and Newk quickly became popular. The only ugly incident occurred when Manchester Catcher Sal Yvars* (who later made a tour in the big leagues with the St. Louis Cards and N.Y. Giants) came to bat and tossed a handful of dirt in Campy's face. The usually mild-mannered Campy whipped off his mask and snarled, "Try that again. 111 beat you to a pulp.'' Yvars never tried it again.

Otherwise Campy was the politest of players. Claude Corbitt, Syracuse lead-off batter, found that Campy would begin each game by saying: "Good evening, Mr. Corbitt. How are you tonight?" Complained Corbitt: "The first time, I was so stunned that I could barely tap the ball back to the pitcher."

Home-Run Chickens. Campy, who began the 1946 season with an opening-day home run, became Nashua's big gun at the plate. He hit 13 homers in 113 games--a solid achievement at Nashua, where there was no outfield fence. A local farmer offered 100 chickens for every home run, and Campy sent his 1,300 prizes to his father, who raised them as a side line to his vegetable business. By the end of the season, Campy was an almost unanimous choice for the league's all-star team and received its most-valuable-player award.

In 1948 Campy was called up to the majors, and the Dodgers' Manager Leo Durocher was dead set on using him as his catcher. General Manager Branch Rickey (a sociologist who is now having plain baseball trouble with his cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates) had other plans. Keep Campy on the bench, he ordered. Make it look as if he can't make the team. Having reaped the profits of opening the major leagues to Negroes, Rickey wanted the added rewards from sending Campy to the St. Paul Saints as the first Negro in the American Association. Dodger fans would never let him get away with it if they knew how good Campy was.

Durocher screamed havoc (a particular talent), but Campy went out to St. Paul. He stayed a month (and hit 13 home runs while he batted .325) before he got Rickey's O.K. to return. The Dodgers had slumped dismally into sixth place. When the beer-keg backstop walked purposefully into the Ebbets Field clubhouse, Durocher was facing a three-game series with the Giants. "Get dressed," he ordered. "You're catching tonight." With Campy's help, the Dodgers climbed back to third place.

Old Indestructible. Next year, under a new manager, gentle Bert Shotton, the Dodgers won a pennant. Jackie Robinson ran wild on the basepaths (he stole 37 bases), took the National League batting title (.342). Campy was still playing the relentless game he had learned in the Negro leagues. Beaned by a Pittsburgh pitcher's fast ball, he was carried to the hospital suffering from a severe concussion. Next day, nevertheless, he was back in uniform, ready to hit batting practice. Shotton stared at him. "You all right?" he asked in disbelief. "Sure," said Campy. "Then what's your left eye out of line for?" demanded Shotton.

That day the indestructible Campy consented to ride the bench while he got his left eye back in line. He was back in action the next afternoon.

For the next two years, the Dodgers came close--but never quite close enough --to another pennant. Campy, too, had good years and bad breaks. In September 1950 he grabbed at a foul tip and suffered a dislocation of his right thumb. That winter, the hot-water heater in his home blew up in his face. As the year wore on, Campy picked up a startling assortment of injuries: a split thumb from a foul ball hit by the Athletics' Eddie Joost in an exhibition game, a bruised hip (during a slide), a chipped elbow when Whitey Lockman of the Giants crashed into him. Still he played, and still he was the sparkplug of the team.

All through the third game of the memorable 1951 pennant playoff with the Giants, Campy kept ducking into the dugout toilet to pray for victory. When Bobby Thomson connected for his unbelievable, game-winning home run for the New York Giants, Campy swore at the soaring ball: "Sink, you devil, sink!" He kept muttering until the ball disappeared.

"Oh, What a Fella!" For Campy, 1952 was a slow year; he had a bad arm and his hitting was off. The Dodgers won the pennant, but once again they lost the World Series to the Yankees. In 1953, his arm healed, Campy went to town. He had the best hitting year for any catcher in the history of organized baseball. He caught 144 games (of 154 scheduled), got 162 hits, walloped 41 home runs, wound up with an average of .312 and the most-valuable-player award. Once more, the Yankees won the World Series.

Last season was Campy's worst ever. His left hand, hit by one of Yankee Allie Reynolds' World Series pitches, was badly bruised, and his batting average sank to .207. He wondered whether he would ever play again. After a while, the hand was partially paralyzed. This spring, after an operation, he was back. Two fingers of his left hand were still stiff, but, said he: "I can curl them around a bat handle, and that's what counts." At a gathering of baseball writers not long ago, the grand ballroom of New York's Waldorf-Astotfia resounded with a special song in his honor (to the tune of O Sole Mio):

Oh, Campanella, oh, he'sa my boy, Oh, what a fella, dat mighty Roy!

Old Peg. To the big, beaming man from Nicetown, life has become a lot nicer than it used to be in the old "bus-league" days. With his $45,000-a-year Dodger salary, plus $10,000 or so more from his Harlem liquor store and some extra folding money from cigarette endorsements, Campy can afford steak every day instead of bologna.

For his wife and six kids, Campy has bought a comfortable home in a prosperous section of St. Albans, L.I. He tends the backyard rose garden himself, officiates at the outdoor barbecue, is never too busy on afternoons at home to play catch with his three boys. Indoors, the large house is cramped with Campy's hobbies. A vast and valuable collection of toy trains clutters the attic; an entire wall of the basement den is covered with carefully tended aquariums of expensive tropical fish. Once the conversation swings around to the bright little creatures, Campy actively resents a change of topic --even to baseball.

For running around St. Albans, the Campanella family is happy to use a Willys jeep station wagon. For trips to the ballpark or the Harlem liquor store, there is a brand-new, copper-colored Cadillac. "When they see that car outside the store," says Campy, "they go around saying, 'Campy's here.' " Sales skyrocket as admirers flock in to shoot the breeze. "So long as they walk out of the store with a package, that's all I care." To Campy, the most fun of all is peddling "Campy's Old Peg,"a house-branded bourbon named by Mrs. Campanella for her husband's famous throw to second.

"It's Nice Up Here." Near his liquor store is a Y.M.C.A. where Campy spends almost every winter afternoon coaching youngsters in basketball and other sports.

"You have to be a man to be a big-league ballplayer," he says, "but you have to have a lot of little boy in you, too." In his wide-eyed, grinning way, Campy shows a lot of the boy. When he steams into second base, say, on a long double, he invariably hoists up his pants to his bulging waistline and stands on the base looking pleased as Punch. In almost every movement he seems to convey the idea that the world is treating him right. He never stops kidding with his roommate, Pitcher Newcombe. "Can I play the television tonight, big man?" Campy will ask, and Newk will snap back: "Maybe, Meat, if I say so." He hums to himself as he works his cap on the hat-stretcher in the dressing room (the gadget expands caps drawn tight by sweat). With a great gold World Series ring on his finger, and wearing a snazzy blue suit with plaid socks, he looks as sharp as he feels.

Unlike Jackie Robinson, Campy, a gradualist by instinct, does not feel that he has to crusade for the rights of his race--except by living right and always playing the best ball he can. Once, when Robinson was spoiling to get into an argument with an umpire, Campy quickly calmed him down with: "Come on, Jackie, don't be like that. Let's not take any chances.

It's nice up here." Baseball, and all it has brought to Campy, is a wonderful way of life. "I love this baseball," says Roy Campanella.

"When you're a kid you play it and it starts going down into you when you're a child. Once that feeling leaves you, your will to play is gone. I saw a movie once showing Ted Williams running those bases, jumping like a kid. I don't care how old you are, you have to have that spirit. I know I've got it and I don't think I'll ever lose it. Baseball doesn't owe me anything, but I owe it plenty. Everything it's done for me has been good and nothin's been bad. The day they take that uniform off me, they'll have to rip it off. And when they do, they can bury me."

* A description of catcher's gear that has been attributed to "Muddy" Ruel, former Washington Senator, who had the awesome job of catching the fireballs of Walter Johnson. * The same performer who hit a pop fly toward first a few days later and tore down the base-path to flatten the Nashua first baseman just as he was making the catch. The baseman: Manager Walter Alston, who doubled as an active player until the collision with Catcher Yvars injured his back and put him on the bench for good.

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