Roy Campanella Marquee Hall of Fame 1969

He was fifteen when he caught seven games for the Washington Elite Giants in 1937. Eight seasons followed with that club, which moved to Baltimore, and with the Philadelphia Stars: 266 hits and a .315 average in 240 recorded games, three East-West All-Star selections, and league leads in runs batted in, doubles and runs in 1945. The box scores that survive from those years are partial, because nobody with the resources to keep them thought them worth keeping.

Brooklyn brought him up in 1948, the major leagues' first Black catcher. He was Most Valuable Player in 1951, 1953 and 1955 and made eight straight All-Star teams. His 1953 brought 41 home runs and 142 runs batted in over 140 games behind the plate, more of each than any catcher before him. Over eighteen seasons in both leagues he had 1,427 hits, 260 home runs and 1,015 runs batted in, batting .283.

The 1957 season was his last, and Brooklyn's last in Brooklyn. That winter his car went off an icy road on Long Island into a telephone pole and his neck was broken. He was paralyzed, and he spent the remaining thirty-five years of his life in a wheelchair, working for the Dodgers in Los Angeles. The Hall of Fame elected him in 1969.