Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Willie Mays was already a superstar by the time the Giants moved across the country following the 1957 season, yet the denizens of San Francisco did not exactly embrace him. They took much more quickly to Orlando Cepeda, who homered against the Dodgers in his major league debut on April 15, 1958, the team’s first game at Seals Stadium, its temporary new home. The slugging 20-year-old first baseman, nicknamed “The Baby Bull” — in deference to his father Pedro “The Bull” Cepeda, a star player in his own right in their native Puerto Rico — was a perfect fit for San Francisco and its culture. He helped to infuse excitement into what had been a sixth-place team the year before, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1958 and kicking off a 17-year career that included an MVP award, a World Series championship, and an induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, not to mention a statue outside Oracle Park.
Sadly, 10 days after Mays’ death at the age of 93, the 86-year-old Cepeda passed away as well. The Giants and the Cepeda family announced his death on Friday night — fittingly, during a game against the Dodgers; fans at Oracle Park stood to observe a moment of silence. “Our beloved Orlando passed away peacefully at home this evening, listening to his favorite music and surrounded by his loved ones,” said Nydia Fernandez, his second of three wives, in the statement. No cause of death was provided.
As the second Black Puerto Rican to play in the AL or NL, after Roberto Clemente, Cepeda became a hero in his homeland as well as a favorite of Giants fans. He spent nine seasons with the Giants (1958-66) before trades to the Cardinals (1966–68) and Braves (1969–72), followed by brief stints with the A’s (1972), Red Sox (1973), and Royals (1974) at the tail end of his career. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound righty was a middle-of-the-lineup force on three pennant winners, including the 1967 champion Cardinals, and was selected for an All-Star team 11 times, including two per year from 1959–62; he was the first Puerto Rican player to start an All-Star Game in the first of those seasons. He was the first player to win both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards unanimously; Albert Pujols is the only one to replicate that feat. Cepeda finished his career with 2,351 hits, 379 homers, 142 steals, and a lifetime batting line of .297/.350/.499 (133 OPS+).
Not everything came easily for Cepeda. If not for the pitcher-friendliness of the Giants’ home ballparks — first Seals Stadium and then Candlestick Park — as well as a series of knee injuries that led to 10 surgeries, he might have hit at least 500 home runs. His path to the Hall of Fame took an extreme detour due to a conviction for smuggling marijuana, which resulted in a 10-month stint in federal prison as well as a humiliating fall from grace in Puerto Rico. Only after his release and his conversion to Buddhism was he able to rehabilitate his image and work his way back into the game’s good graces, a process that culminated with his election to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1999, 25 years after his final game. He was the second Puerto Rican player inducted, preceded only by Clemente.
“Orlando played the game with flamboyance,” said Peter Magowan in 1993, the year he led a group of investors to purchase the Giants from owner Bob Lurie and mounted a campaign for Cepeda’s election to the Hall. “He was an all-around player. He got our fans interested in the team.”
“Orlando overcame challenges throughout his life to build a Hall of Fame career,” said commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement. “This beloved figure from Puerto Rico was one of the many players of his era who helped turn baseball into a multicultural game. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to his family, his friends across our game, and his many fans in Puerto Rico, San Francisco, St. Louis, Atlanta and beyond.”
“I was forgiven,” Cepeda said during his Hall of Fame induction speech. “Everything was erased. Hardships are part of life, and I learned through the obstacles. But I knew it was going to be a beautiful ending. To me, going to the Hall of Fame, that seals everything.”
Orlando Manuel Cepeda Pennes was born on September 17, 1937 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, to Carmen Pennes and Pedro Anibal Cepeda. Born in 1906 (some sources say 1905) in Cataño, Puerto Rico, Pedro, also known as Perucho, was sometimes referred to as “the Babe Ruth of Puerto Rico” and “Babe Cobb.” Standing 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, he was an adept infielder whose best position was shortstop, and a high-average hitter with speed and aggressiveness on the basepaths, hence the Ty Cobb comparison. The Ruth comparison related less to his power than to his “taste for hard living,” as Myron Cope wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1966.
Perucho starred in various Caribbean leagues in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico from 1928–1950. He was the shortstop on the legendary Ciudad Trujillo Dragons, an all-star squad created in 1937 to promote the reelection of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo; Negro Leagues stars Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell were among his teammates, as well as dinner guests in the Cepeda home. Perucho hit .411 across a four-season span (1938–39 to ’42–43) and beat out Gibson for the Puerto Rico Professional Baseball League batting title in 1938–39. He had opportunities to come to the United States to play in the Negro Leagues but refused, recognizing that his volatile temper was a poor match for the racism and segregation he would face.
“He was afraid of the race thing,” Cepeda said in 2015. “He had such a bad temper. He said if somebody used a racial slur, he wouldn’t know what to do. So he didn’t want to come to the States.” Playing in Puerto Rico, Perucho never earned more than $60 per week. He made more money working for the San Juan Water Authority, but his family — Carmen, Pedro Jr., Orlando, and two daughters from relationships with other women — nonetheless lived in poverty amid a crime-riddled neighborhood. His gambling and drinking didn’t help. Orlando inherited his father’s baseball talent; his childhood was dominated by the game, which rescued him from his grim surroundings.
“Had it not been for baseball and the legacy of Perucho, I could have followed my boyhood pals into a world of crime, violence and hate,” he wrote in his 1998 autobiography, Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back.
At 15 years old, Orlando underwent surgery to correct for a bowed right leg caused by overwork at too young an age (some sources cite a basketball injury). While spending two months in the hospital and five more on crutches, he gained over 40 pounds and grew six inches; suddenly, he could hit for power. When he was 16, Pete Zorilla, who owned the Santurce Crabbers, invited him to be their batboy and to practice with the team. In the spring of 1955, Zorilla arranged for Cepeda to have a tryout with the New York Giants. Because he was just 17, he was chaperoned to Melbourne, Florida, by 20-year-old Roberto Clemente, who had starred for Santurce (alongside Mays) and was on his way to join the Pittsburgh Pirates after being plucked from the Dodgers’ system in the Rule 5 draft.
The Giants signed Orlando to a $500 bonus, but in a dark twist of fate, he spent that money almost immediately to cover his father’s funeral expenses. Perucho died on April 27, 1955, two days before his son was to make his professional debut with Salem (Virginia) in the Appalachian League. (Sources differ as to the cause, with cirrhosis of the liver and complications related to malaria both cited.) Still just 17, Orlando didn’t speak any English. Lonely, miserable, and exposed to racial segregation under Jim Crow laws, he hit .247/.339/.366 in…
