Customer Reviews

Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back

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I saw Orlando Cepeda play throught his career (mostly in person during the time he was with St. Louis). He was my hero then, he is a hero now. The book captures it all. I just wished that its publication could have waited to include a chapter on his 1999 induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame (maybe the paperback will). But with all the times he just missed out on the honor, who can blame the man for writing his story now.

Orlando Cepeda is one of the greatest baseball players of our time. His personal life story is even more inspiring than any of his professional achievements. I was so moved by his accounts of overcoming drug addiction and other tribulations. I was also inspired by his encounter with Soka Gakkai and Buddhism. I recommend another book filled with wise quotes from the Buddhism Orlando Cepeda practices titled "Open Your Mind, Open Your Life: A Book of Eastern Wisdom." by Taro Gold. Wonderful.

If you are a real fan of Cepeda or any of the teams he played for, you will probably enjoy this book. It does not fit the "tell all" biographies that have flooded the market, but it gives the man's honest interpretation of his life. Many references are made to all of the people who were "in my corner from the very beginning" but overall it is an enjoyable reading experience.

I tend to prefer my baseball books pure, untainted by "larger" themes (as though there were any).

I knew that this book, billed as a frank autobiography of Orlando Cepeda, would deal with his conviction for smuggling marijuana. But I am interested purely in his baseball career and was planning not to take much interest in what happened afterwards.

And yet, it must be confessed that Orlando's story of the disgrace that he suffered among his fellow Puerto Ricans after his arrest and conviction and how Buddhism helped him to overcome his difficulties and make peace with the world and find his way back into major league baseball was a moving one. Especially touching is the story of his reunion with a son sired out of wedlock.

But the story of his personal experience with weed is uncomfortably vague. He acknowledges having smoked it as a youth in Puerto Rico and that he picked up the habit again in 1965, while still with the Giants, to relieve stress after a particularly bad run-in with The Evil One, Manager Herman Franks.

Yet Orlando appears to have become as happy as a clam after having been traded to the Cardinals in 1966, and this is certainly reflected in his performance while with the Cardinals and in the championship seasons that "El Birdos" compiled with him on the roster.

So with the stress gone, did he continue to smoke pot as a Cardinal? And with the teams that he played on afterwards? How did this affect his performance at game time? Orlando simply does not tell us.

Still, it's "Baseball Forever", and baseball purists will be glad to know that most of this book is set in between the foul lines. This is a familiar-sounding story of a youngster who grew up in poverty, despite having been born the son of Puerto Rico's most celebrated ballplayer, the great Perucho Cepeda. Perucho was known as "The Bull", and Orlando's nickname, which is the title of this book, was naturally passed onto him.

He used his natural ability (presumably also inherited from his father) and effort to overcome prejudice in the United States and build a storybook career.

The year-by-year recapitulation of his performance and that of the teams he played on is interesting but unremarkable and gives the reader a chance to reacquaint himself with the players from that era. What I primarily wanted to hear was Orlando's version of his alleged refusal to move from first base to left field in order to enable the Giants to get both his big bat and that of Willie McCovey into the lineup in a way which would not sacrifice too much defense (McCovey was not mobile enough to play left field effectively).

It is remarkable that a team laden with as much talent as the San Francisco Giants of the 1950's and 1960's won only one National League pennant, and many blame this on Cha-Cha's alleged refusal to make the switch to left.

In interviews conducted by Steve Bitker for his book, "The Giants of `58", Herman Franks repeats this charge, and Orlando sidesteps it. But even Bill Rigney, revered by Orlando as a father figure, states that he thinks that the Giants would have won the pennant in 1959 (McCovey's Rookie of the Year season) if Orlando would have been more cooperative.

Again, Orlando is uncomfortably vague in dealing with this issue, stating only that by 1966, he was ready to try to become the best left-fielder in baseball but that Herman Franks was already set on getting rid of him. But McCovey and Cepeda had played together for six years before 1966 (Cepeda was hurt for virtually all of 1965). What of those years?

The statistical comparisons from those years of how often Orlando played the outfield and of McCovey's at-bats and Orlando's might provide a slightly better defense of Orlando than he does of himself.

After 1959, 1962 seems to be the only year in which McCovey, while healthy, might have been deprived of at-bats because of Orlando's possible resistance to playing left field. Yet the Giants won the pennant that year and so this resistance appears not to have cost them.

But while McCovey does not appear to have been deprived of at-bats during those other years, he mostly played left field in 1963 and 1964, and played it poorly, while Cepeda was anchoring first. Would a switch have made enough of a difference to mean a Giants pennant? The statistics show that Orlando played creditably in left field in 1960 and 1961.

Cepeda also responds to Herman Franks's charge that he was a poor clutch hitter by pointing to his 553 RBI's garnered over his first five seasons. It's an astounding number, but it includes a monstrous 1961 season in which Orlando produced 142 "ribbies", which staggers the five-year total somewhat. From 1958 to 1960, he averaged slightly under 100 RBI's a season.

100 RBI's is usually a sterling number, but RBI's, by themselves, do not a clutch hitter make. Runs batted in during the early stages of a close game might make a difference later but are not the stuff that heroes are made of.

And runs produced when one's team is hopelessly ahead or behind are meaningless. But situational statistics weren't kept in Orlando's day so the case for him having been a good or a bad "clutch" hitter can only be made through anecdotal evidence, which is lacking in both the Cepeda and Franks accounts.

So to this day, it remains unresolved whether Orlando's complaints about being under-appreciated are valid - or just a lot of Baby Bull.

As is all too typical of the "as told to" ghost-written autobiographies, "Baby Bull" enables Orlando "Cha-Cha" Cepeda the opportunity to vent about incidents in his life in which he believed he was mistreated while being less than completely candid about his own missteps. He seems bewildered about the lack of warmth extended to him by Giants superstar Willie Mays. He skims over the details of his marijuana bust (was it a "trace" or 170 lbs. that he was convicted of possessing with intent to distribute). He admits to adultery, but blames it on his Latino heritage and paternal genetics. Despite this, he insists that he has a close bond with his children in their adulthood without detailing much parental involvement in their youth. This said, Herb Fagen's recount of the Hall of Famer's life and career is an easy, enjoyable read, even though the reader is left to fill in the spaces of some of the first baseman's personal troubles.

THIS IS THE STORY OF ORLANDO CEPEDA FORMER MLB PLAYER. ORLANDO TAKES US THRU HIS LIFE IN PUERTO RICO, BASEBALL CAREER, JAIL TIME AND HIS COMMITMENT TO BUDDAHISM. ALONG THE WAY, HE HAS MANY INTERESTING STORIES AND OPINIONS. AMONG HIS STORIES IS A THE FAMOUS BRAWL IN WHICH ORLANDO WAS ABOUT TO TAKE A BAT TO USE ON SOMEONE UNTIL WILLIE MAYS TACKLED HIM AND ENDED THAT THREAT. HE ALSO HAS SOME BAD OPINIONS OF ALVIN DARK, WILLIE MAYS, AND RUBEN GOMEZ. WHETHER ORLANDO IS TELLING THE TRUTH IN ALL OF THESE INSTANCES IS DEBATABLE. BUT HE IS HONEST ABOUT HIS ADULTERY AND DRUG USE. ORLANDO WAS A VERY TALENTED AND COLORFUL PLAYER. I FOUND HIS BOOK TO BE BOTH ENTERTAINING AND INTERESTING. I RECOMMEND IT FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS.

I found the book very boring, as is typical of most books by former ballplayers. I should have known better. Orlando talks about his life growing up in PR, briefly about the minors, the majors, and his post-career life. He is very frank about his life. Orlando didn't care for Al Dark or Willie Mays. OC was the first SF Giants hero, as Willie was considered a NY guy.