Jackie and Campy (8 page)

Shortly after his discharge, the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the most talented Negro League teams, offered Jackie a contract for $400 a month. While with the Monarchs, Robinson established himself as a solid defensive shortstop with impressive base-stealing abilities. He completed the season with a .345 batting average in forty-two league games with ten doubles, four triples, and five home runs.
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But he hated the lack of discipline in the Negro Leagues. As one of the very few college-educated players, he did not fit in with his teammates, who spent their free time drinking, smoking, and partying. “This behavior and the lack of rules, or the failure to enforce rules,” he said, “hurts the caliber of baseball and certainly cuts down fan interest. All the time I was playing in the Negro Leagues I was looking around for something else.”
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Nor was he fond of barnstorming through the South, with its Jim Crow restaurants and hotels, and frequently let his temper get the best of him.

Once, when the Monarchs were traveling through Alabama, the team bus stopped to get some gas. Jackie asked the attendant where he could find a restroom.

“Yours is over there,” the man replied, pointing to the woods behind the station.

Incredulous, Robinson snapped, “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

Not waiting for a response, the Monarchs’ shortstop marched over to the filling station’s bathroom and opened the door. No sooner had he turned the door knob that a white man lunged at him, cursing and screaming. Jackie let his instincts take over and punched him in the mouth. Fearing for their lives, four teammates pulled him into the bus. The traveling secretary left the money right on the gas pump and the Monarchs took off.
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Some teammates thought Jackie too impatient with the discriminatory treatment of blacks. Others admired him for his determination to take a stand against racism. But at that point in his life Robinson did not see himself as a crusader for civil rights as much as an athlete who had grown disillusioned with his chosen career.
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His self-perception changed dramatically when Rickey asked him to break the color barrier. Robinson realized that signing a professional baseball contract placed him front and center in the struggle for black civil rights and that if he failed to make the grade he could set the course of integration back a decade or more. That possibility weighed heavily on his mind. Deep down, Robinson realized that he was not the most talented Negro Leaguer and worried that he could not succeed in the white Minors.

Roy Campanella was much more confident in his abilities. With nine years of playing experience behind him, Campy was a more refined player than Robinson. He might not have had a college education or have been in military service—both of which were extremely important to Rickey—but in terms of temperament and playing ability, Campanella would have been a better choice to break the color barrier. “If I had to make the decision, Campy would have been my first choice,” said Monte Irvin in a recent interview. “He’d been in the Negro Leagues for a decade by 1947 and was already a proven star. Campy was humorous, talented, and had a good mind for baseball. What’s more, he grew up in an integrated situation, playing sports in grade school and high school with white teammates, and had the kind of personality that could handle any situation without letting it affect him personally. Jackie had problems doing that.”
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Campanella’s ability to adapt to racial hostility and not let it affect his psyche was learned at a very young age. Born in 1921 in Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, Roy Campanella was the product of a mixed marriage and the youngest of John and Ida Campanella’s four children. His father was an Italian fruit and vegetable peddler, and his mother an African American housewife. When Roy was seven, the family relocated to an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Philadelphia called Nicetown.
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But the youngster quickly discovered that the name was misleading, much like the misnomer “City of Brotherly Love.”

In the mid-1920s Philadelphia, with a population of 1.9 million, was the third largest metropolis in the nation. Approximately 7.4 percent of the residents were African American, which was fairly significant for the urban North. Concentrated in the South Street area and in parts of North and West Philadelphia—the poorest sections of the city—most African Americans were forced to compete for cheap, unskilled labor with their white, eastern European immigrant neighbors. Those who secured employment were mostly stevedores, street and sewer cleaners, trash collectors, porters, and waiters. Employed or not, Philadelphia’s black population was generally the object of violent prejudice, rioting, and continuous political attack.
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Race relations in Nicetown, however, were not as divisive. Located in North Philadelphia, Nicetown was an ethnically diverse community of blacks, newly arrived Italian immigrants, Irish and Polish Catholics, and Russian Jews. It was a working-class neighborhood where most of the residents were employed by Midvale Steel, Tastykake Bakery, the Budd Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Here poverty was the great equalizer among blacks and whites.
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While racial prejudice existed, it was not as explosive as in the other wards where blacks lived. In Nicetown black kids teamed up with Polish, Italian, and Irish kids to play stickball in the streets and baseball at the local Hunting Park, and they “seldom had any real run-ins.” The Campanellas lived in a corner row house at 1538 Kerbaugh Street, where the adults sat on their front steps on summer evenings and traded stories while they watched the youngsters play in the streets.
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As in all of Philadelphia’s row-house communities, the residents, regardless of color, wanted the same thing for their children—social and economic mobility—and the way to achieve it was with a stable home life, a high school education, and a good job.

John and Ida Campanella were no different from their neighbors. They raised their children to respect themselves and others and to work hard so that they could achieve their objectives. Sometimes those were hard lessons to learn. “One day I was coming home from grade school,” recalled Roy, “and another boy called me ‘half-breed,’ and I hit him. I just couldn’t get it out of my head, though. Was it good or bad that I had a white father and Negro mother? Was it something to be ashamed of?” When Roy finally asked his mother, she told him that his father was a
devoted husband and father and a good provider for their family. “And, above all,” she added, “he gives us what many folks, white or black, can’t buy with all the money in the world. He gives us love, Roy. What more can anyone want?”
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It was a compassionate explanation, but it did not address the realities of race relations in the 1920s or the sensitive issue of identity formation among children of mixed marriages.

Roy may have been considered black because of his mother’s race, but by the social and legal conventions of the 1920s he was a “mulatto.”
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He would learn to use that fact to his advantage in forging amicable relations with both blacks and whites. The other major character trait that enabled Campanella to succeed in both the Negro Leagues and in the white baseball establishment was his self-reliance. That too was cultivated by his parents at an early age.

The Campanellas provided their children with a stable, loving home in order to cultivate a strong sense of independence and self-respect. Ida imbued each of her children with the lessons of her Baptist faith and carted them off to church every Sunday morning. Once, when Roy stole a catcher’s mitt from the Hunting Park baseball field, she reprimanded him so severely he took it back. “That’s the onliest glove I ever had,” he said. “I had to borrow a mitt from the other boys when I played.” John Campanella was a hard worker who expected his children to follow the example he set. Accordingly from the age of nine, Roy contributed to the family’s income by shining shoes, cutting grass, and helping his older brother, Lawrence, on his milk route. He was permitted to keep a quarter a day and promptly spent the money at Shibe Park, home of the Philadelphia Athletics.
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Shibe was just a few blocks away from the Campanellas’ house, and with bleacher seats being just 25 cents, the temptation was too great for Roy. Besides, Connie Mack’s A’s were among the very best teams in baseball during his childhood. Mack was in the process of building a championship dynasty in the 1920s, one that would capture three straight pennants and two World Series titles between 1929 and 1930. Mickey Cochrane, the A’s catcher and one of the leading hitters on the team, was Roy’s hero.
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Campanella’s passion for baseball as well as his natural talent for the game quickly brought him to the attention of local coaches. As a result, he moved rapidly from the crude sandlots of North Philadelphia to professional Negro League baseball. At age twelve he joined the Nicetown
Giants, a sandlot team that competed in Philadelphia’s Industrial League. Most of the players were two to three years older, but Campy held his own. He continued to play with the Nicetown club as a student at Gillespie Junior High School, where he gravitated to catcher.
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When he matriculated to Simon Gratz High School in 1936, he volunteered to catch because no one else wanted to play the position. Impressed by his talent, Sam Roy, coach of Loudenslager, American Legion Post 366, persuaded Campanella to catch for his team that summer, and he became the first black ballplayer on the Legion squad.
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Just fifteen years old, Campanella became the regular catcher of the Legion team. Playing at Shibe Park and Baker Bowl, where the Phillies played their home games, he homered into the left-field stands at both parks.
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Campanella played for Loudenslager again during the summer of 1937, attracting the attention of Tom Dixon, manager of the Bacharach Giants, a semiprofessional Negro League team. Based in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and named for the popular mayor of the seashore resort, the Bacharach Giants were, like most Negro League teams, dirt poor.
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As a result, they played most of their games in the Philadelphia area, where their players resided and could stay during home stands to save money on room and board. To limit salary the Giants scouted local talent, hoping to find outstanding prospects before the higher paying and more successful Negro League teams nabbed them.
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Campy was a perfect candidate. But Dixon first had to ask Ida Campanella’s permission for her son to accompany the Giants on a weeklong trip through New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. She agreed as long as he promised that her son would eat well, stay in a good hotel, and go to church on Sundays. “We have an honest, God-fearing bunch of boys, and we play an honest game of ball,” Dixon assured her. “No cussing, no swearing, no gambling.” The Giants’ manager also explained that Roy would receive $35 for his services and the money would be paid directly to her.
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Ida Campanella gave her permission.

That Saturday night the Bacharach Giants played at Beach Haven, New Jersey, and Roy caught the game. The Giants won 3–1, and though Campanella didn’t get a hit, he impressed his manager by the way he called the game and threw out the only runner who tried to steal on him.
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After a game at Mount Vernon, New York, the Bacharachs headed to Hartford, Connecticut. On the way, the team stopped in Harlem, where they stayed
at the Woodside Hotel at 141st Street and Broadway, one of the few hotels that accommodated Negro League teams. There Dixon introduced Campanella to Biz Mackey, one of the most respected catchers and managers in black baseball. Mackey’s Elite Giants were returning to Washington after a two-week road trip. Mackey, who had heard about the promising young catcher, was curious to see him play and offered him a tryout. It’s uncertain when and where the tryout took place, but the next Monday, June 14, Mackey, en route to Washington, stopped off in Philadelphia and asked Roy to join his Elite Giants.