The Los Angeles Dodgers honored their 1959 World Series-winning team tonight on the 50th anniversary of a memorable tribute to Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella at the Coliseum.
The ceremony at Dodger Stadium preceded tonight's game against the Washington Nationals as an 11-9 loss ended the Dodgers' post-1900 major league record for start-of-the-season home wins at 13 games. Seven members of the 1959 team -- Roger Craig, Tommy Davis, Don Demeter, Fred Kipp, Wally Moon, Joe Pignatano and Norm Sherry -- were honored in tonight's pregame ceremony, along with Louise Larker, widow of first baseman Norm Larker; Barbara Roseboro, widow of catcher Johnny Roseboro; Suzi Wallace, daughter of pitcher Larry Sherry; and Rob Ogle, a grandson of manager Walter Alston.
Campanella's daughter, Joni Roan Campanella, and son Roy Campanella II threw out ceremonial first pitches in his honor.
Following a seventh-place finish in the eight-team National League in 1958, their first season in Los Angeles , the Dodgers won the 1959 pennant in a playoff with the Milwaukee Braves, then defeated the Chicago White Sox in six games to win the World Series.
On May 7, 1959, a crowd of 93,103, then the most to watch a Baseball game in the United States, gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, to watch an exhibition game between the Dodgers and New York Yankees to raise funds for Campanella.
Campanella's playing career was cut short a year earlier in an automobile accident in which he fractured a vertebra and damaged his spinal chord, leaving him confined to a wheelchair.
Between the fifth and sixth innings, the lights of the Coliseum were turned off, and fans were asked to strike matches in tribute when Campanella was wheeled onto the field by former teammate Pee Wee Reese. Campanella called that moment his greatest thrill.
Campanella was the fourth black athlete to play in the major leagues and the first catcher. He was an eight-time all-star and selected as the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1951, 1953 and 1955. He was inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame in 1969.
Campanella, who served as a organizational instructor with the Dodgers and as a member of their community services department following his playing career, died in 1993 at the age of 71 from a heart attack.
"No one had more courage than Roy Campanella," then- Dodger owner Peter O'Malley said on learning of his death. "To me, he was the greatest Dodger of them all."
