Sport: Big Man from Nicetown

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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¢ 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."