Career
A left-handed-hitter, Roseboro had a lifetime .249 batting average with 104 home runs and 548 RBI in 1585 games played with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers (1957–67), Minnesota Twins (1968–69) and Washington Senators (1970). He was a Gold Glove Award winner twice and a four-time All-Star during a fourteen-year career.
On June 14, 1957, Roseboro succeeded Roy Campanella, whose playing career was ended the following January by a paralyzing automobile accident, as the Dodgers' full-time catcher. He also was the Dodgers' starting catcher in the 1959, 1963, 1965, and 1966 World Series, with his team winning the championship the first three times. In the Series, Roseboro was a .157 hitter with one home run and seven RBI in 21 games. The home run was against the New York Yankees in Game One of the 1963 World Series off Whitey Ford—the only home run the Yankee left-hander had yielded to a left-handed batter all season.
After completing his playing career with Washington, Roseboro coached for the Senators (1971) and California Angels (1972–74). Later, he served as a minor league batting instructor (1977) and catching instructor (1987) for the Dodgers. Roseboro and his wife, Barbara Fouch Roseboro, also owned a Beverly Hills public relations firm.
Roseboro appeared as a plainclothes officer in the 1967 Dragnet TV movie. He also appeared as himself in the 1962 Blake Edwards film "Experiment in Terror" along with Don Drysdale and Wally Moon.
Chevrolet was one of the sponsors of the Dodgers' radio coverage in the mid-1960s. The song "See the USA in Your Chevrolet," made famous by Dinah Shore in the 50s, was sung in Chevrolet commercials by Roseboro and other Dodger players. Dodger announcer Jerry Doggett said that Roseboro was a singer "whose singing career was destined to go absolutely nowhere."
Johnny Roseboro died in Los Angeles, California at age of 69.
Read more about this topic: John Roseboro
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)