Major League Baseball
Jackie Robinson's first season in the major leagues came in 1947, and Campanella began his MLB career with the Brooklyn Dodgers the following season, playing his first game on April 20, 1948. 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.
After spending most of the beginning of the 1948 season on the bench, Campanella was assigned to the Saint Paul Saints, the Dodgers' affiliate in the Class AAA American Association, where he resided in the Rondo neighborhood. On May 18, Campanella become the first person to break the color barrier in the American Association when he entered a game. By early July, after having success against the league's pitching, he returned to the Dodgers.
Campanella stayed at the Major League level and played for the Dodgers from July 1948 through 1957 as their regular catcher. In 1948, he had three different uniform numbers (33, 39, and 56) before settling on 39 for the rest of his career.
Campanella was selected to the All-Star Game every year from 1949 through 1956. With his 1949 All-Star selection, he was one of the first four African Americans so honored. (Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe and Larry Doby were also All-Stars that year.) In 1950 Campanella hit home runs in five straight games; the only other Dodgers to homer in five consecutive games are Shawn Green (2001), Matt Kemp (2010), Adrián González (2014–15), Joc Pederson (2015), Max Muncy (2019), and Shohei Ohtani (2025).
Campanella received the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in the National League three times: in 1951, 1953, and 1955. In each of his MVP seasons, he batted over .300, hit more than 30 home runs, and had more than 100 runs batted in (RBI). His 142 RBI during 1953 exceeded the franchise record of 130, which had been held by Jack Fournier (1925) and Babe Herman (1930). Today, it is the second most in franchise history, Tommy Davis breaking it with 153 RBI in 1962. 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. In his career, he threw out 57% of the base runners who tried to steal a base on him, the highest percentage of any catcher in major league history. He also had four seasons where he threw out more than 60% of attempted base stealers.
In 1955, Campanella's final MVP season, he helped Brooklyn win its first World Series championship. After the Dodgers lost the first two games of the series to the Yankees, Campanella began Brooklyn's comeback by hitting a two-out, two-run home run in the first inning of Game 3. The Dodgers won that game, got another home run from Campanella in a Game 4 victory that tied the series, and then went on to claim the series in seven games when Johnny Podres shut out the Yankees 2–0 in Game 7.
Campanella caught three no-hitters during his career: Carl Erskine's two, on June 19, 1952 and May 12, 1956 and Sal Maglie's on September 25, 1956. "In my no-hitter...I only shook Campy off once," Maglie recalled. "He was doing the thinking, calling the pitches just right for every batter in every situation, and all I had to do was check the sign to see if I agreed and then throw."
After the 1957 season, the Brooklyn Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles and became the Los Angeles Dodgers, but Campanella's playing career came to an end as a result of an automobile accident. He never played a game for Los Angeles.
