Breakfast was on Roy Campanella for Verlene Price Booker and her extended family whenever the St. Paul Saints catcher slugged a home run, which meant Wheaties all around in early summer 1948.
Price Booker was 17 years old and lived across Rondo Avenue from the future Dodgers hall of famer during his brief but memorable layover in the Capital City.
Campanella hit 13 home runs with 39 RBIs in just 35 games for the Saints before being promoted to Brooklyn, earning a case of Wheaties from General Mills for every long ball he hit and a lifelong fan from this grateful beneficiary.
“There were 12 of us, plus three cousins my mom and dad were raising,” recalled Price Booker. “I never met the man but his face was on the boxes. I know he was hitting a lot of them.”
The Saints are honoring Campanella on Sunday at CHS Field 69 years after he broke the color barrier for them in the old American Association with a power burst that would help him win three National League Most Valuable Player awards during a 10-year big-league career cut short by tragedy.
“I think it’s great,” said Price Booker, 88, who still lives in the Rondo neighborhood. “It’s a little late, but better late than never.”
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Commission have proclaimed Sunday “Roy Campanella Day.” A video tribute will be shown before the Saints’ 5:05 p.m. game against the Cleburne Railroaders.
Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, will pay tribute to Campanella integrating minor-league baseball one year after Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball with the Dodgers.
“Campy” played eight seasons in the Negro Leagues before signing with the Dodgers. He was the fourth black player to suit up in MLB following Robinson, Cleveland’s Larry Doby and fellow Dodger Don Bankhead. But he was the first in the American Association, the last of the three Triple-A minor leagues to affiliate.
The Saints were Brooklyn’s top farm team when Campanella arrived on May 18, 1948, after being buried on the bench during the first month of the season with the Dodgers.
“He integrated the league here as a rookie when nobody knew how good he was going to be,” baseball author and historian Frank White said.
White is the coordinator of the Twins’ Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program and lobbied the Saints to recognize Campanella at St. Paul-owned CHS Field.
“Triple-A back then was every bit as good as the major leagues when you consider there were only 16 teams in the big leagues,” White said. “You were a very good player just waiting your turn. Roy Campanella integrating the American Association was a tremendous piece of history. That’s why it’s important for the Saints to talk about this history, because it’s really kind of lost.”
There is debate among baseball historians over why Campanella was demoted to St. Paul early in 1948 after earning a roster spot out of spring training.
Jules Tygiel, who authored “Baseball’s Great Experiment” about Robinson erasing the color line, wrote that general manager Branch Rickey ordered Brooklyn manager Leo Durocher to play Campanella sparingly in the outfield despite his strong catching pedigree — to justify sending him to the minors.
Campanella concurred in his autobiography, “It’s Good To Be Alive”, writing that Rickey, who famously signed Robinson, wanted to be responsible for integrating the American Association as well.
Rickey supplemented Campanella’s $5,000 Brooklyn salary with a $1,500 bonus when he was dispatched to St. Paul.
“Saints Get Campanella, Negro Catcher” read the banner headline on the first page of that day’s Pioneer Press sports section. Columnist Joe Hennessy cynically wrote the move was a box-office ploy to pack Lexington Park with black fans.
Campanella’s arrival was a cultural phenomenon in the traditionally black Rondo neighborhood, White said.
The Twin Cities certainly were more progressive than the Jim Crow South, but hotels in St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1948 were still segregated.
So Campanella rented a room at the Rideaux Boardinghouse at 707 Rondo Ave. His wife, Ruthe, joined him and gave birth to the couple’s first child, Roy Jr., on June 20 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in downtown St. Paul.
Saints manager Walter Alston, the Dodgers’ future hall of fame skipper, wrote Campanella into the Saints’ lineup May 22 at Columbus. His debut was a near disaster.
Campanella was hitless in four at-bats, struck out twice and committed an error at catcher. During an extended eastern road trip he accumulated four hits — all singles — as the struggling Saints tumbled out of first place all the way down to fourth.
“They were in the heat of trying to win a championship and his first couple of games didn’t do too well, which left a lot of people wondering, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” according to White. “But then he went on a tear.”
Campanella’s first Twin Cities appearance was May 30 in Minneapolis, where Campanella hit a pair of home runs in a blowout loss to the Millers.
The next day a crowd of more than 11,000 showed up at Lexington Park, and Campanella treated fans to a triple and solo home run. During St. Paul’s next homestand, Campanella found his groove, homering in six straight games while driving in runs left and right.
After Roy Jr., was born, the Saints left St. Paul for another road trip. When they returned in early July, Campanella was already in Brooklyn, his big-league return secured during six productive weeks when he posted a whopping OPS of 1.147.
Over the next decade, Campanella hit 242 home runs, played on five pennant winners and was National League MVP in 1951, ’53 and ’55, when the Dodgers won their only World Series championship in Brooklyn.
The franchise relocated to Los Angeles after the 1957 season but Campanella never played on the West Coast.
On Jan. 28, 1958, he was driving to his home in Glen Cove, N.Y., and apparently fell asleep at the wheel. His rental car slammed into a telephone pole and flipped on its side.
The wreck left Campanella a quadriplegic. He never walked again.
The Dodgers honored their fallen star with “Roy Campanella Night” on May 7, 1959, when 93,103 people packed the L.A. Memorial Coliseum — at the time the largest crowd ever to watch a baseball game — for an exhibition against the rival New York Yankees.
Tears flowed when the stadium lights went down to reveal a sea of glowing candles as Campanella was wheeled out to home plate. Proceeds from the game helped pay his crushing medical bills.
In 1969, Campanella was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was a special catching instructor for the Dodgers for years before dying of a heart attack in 1993 at age 71.
Price Booker never met her benefactor but remembered seeing Campanella come and go across the street all those decades ago.
“He stood out,” she said. “He was a handsome fella. He was big and muscular and evidently was a good player.”
Campanella was better than good.
He was unforgettable.
REMEMBERING ROY CAMPANELLA >
Born: Nov. 21, 1921, Philadelphia
Died: June 26, 1993, Woodland Hills, Calif.
Height, weight: 5 feet 9, 190 pounds
Position: Catcher
Team: Brooklyn Dodgers, 1948-57
Stats: 1,215 games; .276 avg.; 242 HR; 856 RBI; .860 OPS
With the Saints: 35 games; .325 avg.; 13 HR, 35 RBI; 1.147 OPS
Did you know? Campanella spent eight years in the Negro Leagues before integrating the American Association with the Saints in 1948. … Was an eight-time all-star with the Dodgers and three-time National League Most Valuable Player. … Career ended in 1958 after car wreck left him a quadriplegic. … First son, Roy Campanella Jr., was born June 20, 1948, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul.
