"You didn't get hurt when you played in the Negro leagues," he later explained. "You played no matter what happened to you because if you didn't play, you didn't get paid."

Honing his skills by playing winter ball in Latin America, Campanella was much in demand, in part because he spoke Spanish and often managed the teams he played for. Offer From a Dodger

It was after such a stint in Venezuela in 1946 that Campanella was summoned to Brooklyn by Branch Rickey. The Dodgers' general manager, who had already laid the groundwork for breaking the major league color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract, offered Campanella $185 a month to play for the Nashua, N.H., team of the New England League.

It meant a steep pay cut for Campanella, but the chance to help make baseball history was too tempting to pass up, and he accepted. He played the 1946 season with Walter Alston -- who later managed the Dodgers -- as his manager and roomed with another recent black recruit, a pitcher named Don Newcombe.

In 1947, the year Robinson became the first black player in the major leagues, Campanella played for Montreal, the Class AAA International League club for whom Robinson had played the year before.

Campanella joined the Dodgers the next year at a $5,000 annual salary, but after three games he was sent down to St. Paul, not because it was felt he needed more seasoning but because Rickey wanted him to break the color barrier in the American Association, a chore that earned Campanella a $1,500 raise.

After 35 games, at the insistence of the Brooklyn manager, Leo Durocher, Campanella was called back to the parent club and stayed, playing 83 games his rookie season. A String of Injuries

Over the next nine seasons, Campanella suffered and survived repeated injuries. But they took a toll.

Campanella suffered problems with his left hand and was unable to move the third and little fingers laterally, but he caught 111 games in 1954, anyway.

"I can grip a bat and I can grip a ball," he said, "and that's all that counts."

Still, Campanella, realizing that he could not play baseball forever, decided to find a business that would provide security for his wife and five children in future years. He opened a liquor store in Harlem, which prospered.

It was while driving from the store to his home in Glen Cove, L.I., in the early morning hours of Jan. 28, 1958, that Campanella suffered the injury that ended his career. His car skidded on a wet spot near the crest of a hill, crashed into a telephone pole and overturned, fracturing two of Campanella's vertebrae.

A four-and-a-half-hour operation by five surgeons at the Glen Cove Community Hospital was credited with saving his life, but nothing could restore movement to his body below the shoulders.

He underwent rehabilitation at the Rusk Institute of the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center, where his determination shone through from the beginning.

Campanella recounted his first days of therapy in his 1959 book, "It's Good to Be Alive," which was made into a television movie in 1974. When the institute's founder, Dr. Howard A. Rusk, lectured him on how hard he would have to work and how discouraged he would get and then asked, "Do you think you're ready for it?" Campanella had a ready reply:

"When do we start?"

In the aftermath of the accident, Campanella suffered a series of further setbacks. His first marriage deteriorated and his home had to be sold to pay debts, but his gritty determination to make a life for himself in a wheelchair won him even more fame and admiration than he had enjoyed as a baseball star.

That became apparent on May 8, 1959, when 93,103 paying fans, the largest crowd in baseball history, filled the Los Angeles Coliseum for an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the Yankees dedicated to Campanella. During the evening the stadium's lights were darkened and the fans lighted matches in honor of Campanella, who received about $75,000 from the gate receipts.

Ten years later, when he was elected to the Hall of Fame, Campanella, the second black player (after Robinson) to be so honored, beamed.

"This completes my baseball career," he said. "All my disappointments are behind me. There is nothing more I could ask for in baseball."

Roy Campanella