Starting Nine: Catch of the Year
The Hall of Fame's Starting Nine includes must-see artifacts from every big league team. Check out the Dodgers Starting Nine online.
Roy Campanella was a four-time All-Star and a Most Valuable Player Award winner when the 1953 season began.
Eight months later, Campanella has raised his game to the point where many were calling him the greatest catcher of all time.
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On Nov. 19, 1953, Campanella was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player – earning 17 of 24 first-place votes in the balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Campanella outdistanced runner-up Eddie Mathews of the Braves 297-216 following a season where he set a new standard with 40 home runs as a catcher.
“I can’t really find the words to say how I really feel about winning the award,” Campanella told the United Press. “Getting it once is a big thrill, but winning it twice is out of this world. And winning it on my birthday gave me something special to celebrate.”
Born Nov. 19, 1921, in Philadelphia, Campanella was a teenage prodigy who was playing in the Negro Leagues by age 15. Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers prior to the 1946 season, Campanella debuted in the majors in 1948 and was named to his first All-Star Game the following year.
In 1951, Campanella hit .325 with 33 home runs and 108 RBI to win the NL MVP. He helped the Dodgers win the NL pennant a year later, then compiled a season for the ages in 1953 with a .312 batting average, 41 home runs (one came as a pinch-hitter) and an NL-best 142 RBI.
Hitting fourth or fifth in the powerful Dodgers’ lineup for most of these season, Campanella was one of six Dodgers hitters with at least 100 runs scored.
The Dodgers’ 955 runs scored were the fifth-most in NL history to that point. The team won 105 games and finished 13 games ahead of runner-up Milwaukee in the NL pennant race.
“The main thing was that I kept playing regularly,” Campanella told the International News Service of the 144 games in which he appeared that year. “(I) had no injury to keep me out of the lineup any length of time.”
A force behind the plate as well as in the field, Campanella threw out 53.7 percent of runners who tried to steal on him in 1953 – the second-best mark in the NL behind only the Giants’ Wes Westrum at 54.5 percent. It was the first season of his career that Campanella did not lead the NL in caught stealing percentage.
Campanella also set a single-season record for catchers with 807 putouts.
Campanella became the third NL player to win more than one BBWAA MVP, joining Carl Hubbell (1933, 1936) and Stan Musial (1943, 1946, 1948). He would go on to win a third MVP in 1955, leading Brooklyn to its first-and-only World Series championship.
Campanella was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1969. A bat he used during the 1953 season is on display in the Museum’s Timeline.
Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Starting Nine
The Hall of Fame's Starting Nine is a lineup of must-see artifacts from our vast collection containing tens of thousands of pieces that preserve the magical moments and memorable stories of our National Pastime. Our curators have spent countless hours hand-picking special objects from every major league team to create a lineup of pieces you simply won’t believe we have!
