Orlando Cepeda, the second Puerto Rican player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and one of the best hitters of his era from the late 1950s to early 1970s, died Friday at age 86.
His death was announced by the San Francisco Giants. The organization did not say where he died.
Playing 17 seasons in the major leagues, primarily at first base but also in the outfield and, late in his career, as a designated hitter, Cepeda hit 379 home runs, 2,351 hits, drove in 1,365 runs and finished his career with a .297 batting average.
He was unanimously selected as the National League Rookie of the Year with the Giants in 1958, their first season in San Francisco. He was also unanimously selected as the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1967, the year he helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series championship. He hit at least .300 in nine seasons and appeared in nine All-Star Games.
Cepeda’s father, Pedro, known as Bull for his strength, was a professional baseball player, primarily a shortstop, often called the Babe Ruth of Puerto Rico. Orlando Cepeda, a muscular 6-foot-2, 210-pound right-handed power hitter, became known as Baby Bull.
While playing in the Giants’ minor league system, future Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, originally from the Dominican Republic, was inspired by Cepeda and his fellow Latinos on the Giants.
“I was seeing Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou and Ruben Gomez on TV,” Marichal told the Associated Press. “I started learning about the big leagues and hoping that one day I could be a part of it. »
Marichal, who joined the Giants in 1960, said Cepeda “was the type of player who wasn’t afraid, the type of player you wanted to see behind you.”
But Cepeda’s reputation was tarnished a year after his playing career ended.
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, likely considering his prison sentence, rejected him for Hall of Fame consideration after 15 years of voting. It wasn’t until 1999, and following a vote by the Veterans Affairs Committee, that Cepeda made it to Cooperstown.
Cepeda had been revered in Puerto Rico almost as much as Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder and first member of the Commonwealth Hall of Fame who died in a 1972 plane crash while delivering earthquake relief supplies to Nicaragua.
Cepeda’s drug conviction contrasted with Clemente’s selflessness and made him something of an outcast at home after his release from prison.
“When you play baseball, you have a name and money and you feel safe from bullets,” Cepeda told Sports Illustrated as he was about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “You forget who you are. Especially in a Latin country, they make you feel like you’re God. I learned that one mistake, in two seconds, can cause a disaster that seems to last forever.”
Orlando Cepeda was born in Ponce, PR, on September 17, 1937. His father, though a baseball hero in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Caribbean, was a victim of the major league 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 RBIs, with 142, at as part of a hitting lineup that also included Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Felipe Alou.
Cepeda helped the Giants win their first title in San Francisco in 1962, but they were defeated by the Yankees in the World Series.
Plagued by knee injuries, Cepeda was traded to the Cardinals early in the 1966 season for pitcher Ray Sadecki. The following year, he hit a career-high .325 and led the National League in RBIs with 111, earning him the MVP award. The Cardinals went on to defeat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.
Cepeda played on the Cardinals’ pennant-winning team in 1968, and later with the Atlanta Braves, Oakland Athletics and Red Sox. He retired in 1974 after just one season with the Kansas City Royals.
After moving to Southern California in the mid-1980s, he embraced Buddhism while seeking to return to the world of baseball. “As soon as I entered the temple, it changed my life,” he told the AP in 1993. “It taught me to accept responsibility for my actions, not to blame others .”
Cepeda returned to the San Francisco area in 1987. He scouted the Giants in 1988 and then became a member of their community relations department, speaking to young people over the years about drug and alcohol abuse.
But trouble began again in May 2007, when Cepeda was stopped for speeding in Solano County, north of San Francisco. Police said they found cocaine, marijuana and hypodermic syringes in his car. But he was allowed to plead not guilty to a charge of possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana and was fined $100.
County Attorney David Paulson fired the prosecutor assigned to the case hours before the prosecutor’s expected resignation, saying the decision to drop felony cocaine charges suggested Cepeda had received favorable treatment because of his celebrity status.
Cepeda held the title of Community Ambassador within the Giant organization when he died. No information on survivors was immediately available.
For all the years he was rejected 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 began at the San Juan airport, where he had been arrested 24 years earlier, and wound through Old San Juan through streets lined with crowds.
The Giants retired Cepeda’s number 30 two weeks before he was inducted 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 alongside statues honoring Mays, McCovey, Marichal, and pitcher Gaylord Perry.
After all his ordeals, Cepeda was extremely satisfied.
“When things like this happen to you,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle at the unveiling of his statue, “that’s when I think, ‘Orlando, you’re a very lucky person.'”