Roy Campanella (November 19, 1921 – June 26, 1993), nicknamed "Campy", was an American professional baseball player, primarily as a catcher.

[1] After he retired as a player as a result of the accident, Campanella held positions in scouting and community relations with the Dodgers.

Campanella had athletic gifts that he used to great effect; he was elected captain of every sports team he played on in high school, but baseball was his passion.

[4] Of mixed race, Campanella was prohibited from MLB play as a result of the baseball color line.

[5] Lázaro Salazar, the team's manager, told Campanella that one day he would play at the major league level.

[9] For the 1946 season, Robinson was assigned to the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers' affiliate in the Class AAA International League.

Campanella was the first African American to manage White players of an organized professional baseball team.

In later years, Robinson and his wife sometimes stayed with the Campanella family during some ballgames because adequate hotels for blacks could not be found in the city.

That same year, Campanella hit 40 home runs in games in which he appeared as a catcher, a record that lasted until 1996, when it was exceeded by Todd Hundley.

Campanella caught three no-hitters during his career: Carl Erskine's two, on June 19, 1952[18] and May 12, 1956[19] and Sal Maglie's on September 25, 1956.

Campanella lived in Glen Cove, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island; he operated a liquor store in Harlem between regular-season games and during the off-season.

[25] Campanella wrote his autobiography, It's Good to Be Alive, which was published in 1959; in it, he discussed his convalescence and partial recovery after the crash.

In January 1959, the Dodgers named him assistant supervisor of scouting for the eastern United States and special coach at the team's annual spring training camp in Vero Beach, Florida, serving each year as a mentor and coach to young catchers in the Dodger organization.

[26] On September 27, 1959, Campanella appeared as himself in an episode of Lassie called "The Mascot" in which he coached the Calverton boys' baseball team and advised Timmy about a matter of cheating.

The New York Yankees agreed to make a special visit to Los Angeles (between road series in Kansas City and Chicago) to play an exhibition game against the Dodgers for the occasion.

[28] On March 28, 1970, Campanella was named manager of the West team in the East-West Major League Baseball Classic, a charity exhibition All-Star game held in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

[29] In 1978, Campanella moved to California and accepted a job with the Dodgers as assistant to the director of community relations, Don Newcombe, his former teammate and longtime friend.

[32] In July 1969, Campanella was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,[33] the second player of black heritage (actually bi-racial) so honored, after Jackie Robinson.

In 2020, The Athletic ranked Campanella at number 94 on its "Baseball 100" list, complied by sportswriter Joe Posnanski.

", written and recorded by Buddy Johnson in 1949 (and covered by Count Basie and his Orchestra that same year), "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, and in the refrain of "Talkin' Baseball" by Terry Cashman.