Baseball star Orlando Cepeda, known as Baby Bull, dies at the age of 86

Orlando Cepeda, the second Puerto Rican-born player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and one of the leading sluggers of his time from the late 1950s to the early ’70s, died Friday. He was 86 years old.

His death was announced by the San Francisco Giants. The organization did not say where he died.

Playing 17 seasons in the major leagues, mostly at first base but also in the outfield and, near the end of his career, as a designated hitter, Cepeda hit 379 home runs, batted in 2,351, drove in 1,365 runs and finished his career. Did. With a batting average of .297.

He was unanimously selected as the National League Rookie of the Year with the Giants in 1958, his first season in San Francisco. He was also the unanimous choice as the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1967, the year he helped lead the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series championship. He hit at least .300 in nine seasons and played in nine All-Star Games.

Cepeda’s father, Pedro, known as Bull for his strength, was a professional baseball player, primarily a shortstop, who was often called the Babe Ruth of Puerto Rico. Orlando Cepeda, a 6-foot-2-inch, 210-pound right-handed power hitter, became known as the Baby Bull.

While pitching in the Giants farm system, future Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, of the Dominican Republic, was inspired by Cepeda and his fellow Latino players on the Giants.

Marichal once told The Associated Press, “I would watch Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou and Ruben Gomez on television.” “I started learning what the major leagues were like, and I hoped that one day I could be in one of them.”

Marichal, who joined the Giants in 1960, said Cepeda was “the type of player who had no fear, the type of player you wanted playing behind you.”

But a year after his playing days ended, Cepeda’s reputation was tarnished.

He was arrested in San Juan in December 1975 for his role in smuggling marijuana from Colombia and spent 10 months in federal prison.

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America, presumably mindful of his prison term, rejected him for the Hall of Fame in its 15-year balloting. By 1999, and after a vote of the Veterans Committee, Cepeda secured a position in Cooperstown.

Cepeda was given almost the same respect in Puerto Rico as Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder and the commonwealth’s first Hall of Famer, who died in a plane crash in 1972 while he was traveling in an earthquake in Nicaragua. Were delivering relief material.

Cepeda’s drug conviction contrasted with Clemente’s altruism and turned him into an outcast at home after his release from prison.

“When you play baseball you have name and money and you feel like you’re bulletproof,” Cepeda told Sports Illustrated when he was about to enter the Hall of Fame. “You forget who you are. Especially in Latin country, they make you feel like you’re God. I learned that one mistake, in two seconds, can cause a disaster that lasts forever.

Orlando Cepeda was born on September 17, 1937 in Ponce, PR. His father, though a baseball hero in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Caribbean, was a victim of the major leagues’ color barrier. He died in 1955, just before his son played his first game in the Giants farm system.

Cepeda was named Rookie of the Year after hitting .312 with 25 home runs for the 1958 Giants. Three years later, he led the league in home runs with 46, and batted .142 as part of a slugging lineup that also included Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Felipe Alou.

Cepeda helped lead the Giants to their first in San Francisco in 1962, but were defeated by the Yankees in the World Series.

Troubled by knee injuries, Cepeda was traded to the Cardinals at the beginning of the 1966 season in exchange for pitcher Ray Sadecki. The following year, he hit a career-high .325 and led the National League with 111 runs scored en route to MVP honors. The Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

Cepeda played on the Cardinals’ pennant-winning 1968 team, and later played with the Atlanta Braves, Oakland Athletics and Red Sox. After one season with the Kansas City Royals, he retired in 1974.

After moving to Southern California in the mid-1980s, he converted to Buddhism, seeking a return to the world of baseball. “From the moment I stepped into the temple, it changed my life,” he told the AP in 1993. “It taught me to accept responsibility for my own actions and not blame others.”

Cepeda returned to the San Francisco area in 1987. He discovered the Giants in 1988 and then became a member of their community relations department, and spent years speaking to youth about drug and alcohol abuse.

But trouble struck again in May 2007, when Cepeda was stopped for speeding in Solano County, north of San Francisco. Police reported finding cocaine, marijuana and hypodermic syringes in his car. But he was allowed no contest to a charge of possession of marijuana less than an ounce and was fined $100.

The county district attorney, David Paulson, fired the prosecutor handling the case just hours before the prosecutor resigned, saying that the decision to drop the felony cocaine charges showed that Cepeda received favorable treatment because of her celebrity status. met.

Cepeda, who lived in Concord, California, held the title of community ambassador at the giant organization at the time of his death. His survivors include five sons, Hector, Orlando Jr., Carl, Malcolm and Ali.

For all the years he was despised in Puerto Rico, Cepeda found redemption when he was elected to the Hall of Fame. The Puerto Rican government brought him back for a parade in his honor. It started at San Juan Airport, where he was arrested 24 years earlier, and passed through Old San Juan with crowded streets.

The Giants retired Cepeda’s number 30 two weeks before his induction into the Hall of Fame. In September 2008, they honored him with a bronze statue outside their stadium, AT&T Park (now Oracle Park). It stands with statues paying tribute to Mays, McCovey, Marichal and pitcher Gaylord Perry.

After all his hardships, Cepeda was extremely satisfied.

“When things like this happen to you,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle at the unveiling of his statue, “then I say to myself, ‘Orlando, you’re a very lucky man.'”