Orlando Cepeda, the second Puerto Rican native to be inducted into the Baseball Corridor of Fame and one of many sport’s main sluggers of his time, from the late Fifties to the early ’70s, died on Friday. He was 86.
His demise was introduced by the San Francisco Giants. The group didn’t say the place he died.
Taking part in for 17 seasons within the main leagues, principally at first base but additionally within the outfield and, on the finish of his profession, as a chosen hitter, Cepeda hit 379 residence runs, had 2,351 hits, drove in 1,365 runs and had a profession batting common of .297.
He was a unanimous choice because the Nationwide League’s rookie of the yr with the Giants in 1958, their first season in San Francisco. He was additionally a unanimous alternative because the league’s Most worthy participant in 1967, the yr he helped lead the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Sequence championship and performed in 9 All-Star Video games.
Cepeda’s father, Pedro, generally known as the Bull for his power, was an expert baseball participant, primarily a shortstop, who was referred to as the Babe Ruth of Puerto Rico. Orlando Cepeda, a muscular 6-foot-2-inch, 210-pound right-handed energy hitter, grew to become generally known as the Child Bull.
Whereas pitching within the Giants’ farm system, Juan Marichal, the long run Corridor of Famer from the Dominican Republic, was impressed by Cepeda and his fellow Latino gamers on the Giants.
“I might see Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou and Ruben Gomez on tv,” Marichal as soon as instructed The Related Press. “I began studying what the foremost leagues had been all about, and I hoped that in the future I could possibly be one in all them.”
Marichal, who joined the Giants in 1960, mentioned that Cepeda “was the kind of participant who had no worry, the kind of participant you wished enjoying behind you.”
However Cepeda’s popularity was tarnished a yr after his enjoying days ended.
He was arrested in San Juan in December 1975 for his function in smuggling marijuana from Colombia and spent 10 months in federal jail.
The Baseball Writers Affiliation of America, presumably taking his jail time period into consideration, rejected him for the Corridor of Fame in 15 years of balloting. It was not till 1999, and a vote by the Veterans Committee, that Cepeda made it to Cooperstown.
Cepeda had been revered in Puerto Rico practically as a lot as Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates proper fielder and the commonwealth’s first Corridor of Famer, who died in a airplane crash in 1972 whereas he was delivering earthquake reduction provides to Nicaragua.
However Cepeda’s drug conviction, in distinction with Clemente’s altruism, turned him into one thing of an outcast at residence after his launch from jail.
“Whenever you play baseball you will have a reputation and cash and you are feeling such as you’re bulletproof,” Cepeda instructed Sports activities Illustrated when he was about to enter the Corridor of Fame. “You neglect who you’re. Particularly in a Latin nation, they make you’re feeling like you’re God. I discovered that one mistake, in two seconds, could make a catastrophe that appears to final eternally.”
Orlando Cepeda was born in Ponce, P.R., on Sept. 17, 1937. His father, although a baseball hero in Puerto Rico and elsewhere within the Caribbean, was a sufferer of the foremost leagues’ colour barrier. He died in 1955, simply earlier than his son performed his first sport within the Giants’ farm system.
Cepeda hit .312 with 25 residence runs for the 1958 Giants to win rookie-of-the-year honors. Three years later, he led the league in residence runs, with 46, and runs batted in, with 142, as a part of a slugging lineup that additionally included Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Felipe Alou. Cepeda helped propel the Giants to their first pennant in San Francisco in 1962, however they had been crushed by the Yankees within the World Sequence.
Affected by knee accidents, Cepeda was traded to the Cardinals early within the 1966 season. The following yr, he hit a career-high .325 and led the Nationwide League in runs batted in, with 111, in capturing M.V.P. honors. The Cardinals went on to defeat the Boston Purple Sox within the World Sequence.
Cepeda performed on the Cardinals’ pennant-winning 1968 staff, and later with the Atlanta Braves, the Oakland Athletics and the Purple Sox. He retired in 1974, after a single season with the Kansas Metropolis Royals.
He moved to Southern California within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, then embraced Buddhism whereas searching for a return to the baseball world. “From the second I stepped into the temple, it modified my life,” he instructed The A.P. in 1993. “It taught me to simply accept accountability for my actions, to not blame others.”
Cepeda returned to the San Francisco space in 1987. He scouted for the Giants in 1988 after which grew to become a member of their neighborhood relations division, chatting with younger individuals by means of the years about drug and alcohol abuse.
However bother arrived once more in Could 2007, when Cepeda was stopped for rushing in Solano County, north of San Francisco. The police reported discovering cocaine, marijuana and hypodermic syringes in his automotive, however he was allowed to plead no contest to a cost of possessing lower than one ounce of marijuana, and was fined $100.
The county district legal professional, David Paulson, fired the prosecutor dealing with the case hours earlier than the prosecutor was scheduled to resign, saying the choice to drop felony cocaine prices recommended that Cepeda had obtained favorable therapy due to his celeb standing.
Cepeda held the title of neighborhood ambassador within the Big group at his demise. A listing of survivors was not instantly accessible.
For all of the years of being shunned in Puerto Rico, Cepeda received redemption when he was elected to the Corridor of Fame. The Puerto Rican authorities introduced him again for a parade in his honor. It started on the San Juan airport, the place he had been arrested 24 years earlier, and handed by means of Outdated San Juan alongside streets lined by crowds.
The Giants retired Cepeda’s No. 30 two weeks earlier than his induction into the Corridor of Fame. In September 2008, they honored him with a bronze statue outdoors their stadium, AT&T Park (now Oracle Park). It stands alongside statues paying tribute to Mays, McCovey, Marichal and the pitcher Gaylord Perry. In spite of everything his travails, Cepeda was exceedingly gratified.
“When issues like this occur to you,” he instructed The San Francisco Chronicle on the unveiling of his statue, “That’s after I say to myself, ‘Orlando, you’re a really fortunate individual.’”
John Yoon contributed reporting.
