Orlando Cepeda: One Final Swing for the Baby Bull

All Orlando Cepeda ever wanted was a second chance, a chance to set things right, a chance to redeem himself. That did not seem so much to ask, given the kind of player he had been. Baseball, though, took its own sweet time before giving it to him.

Cepeda played for 17 seasons as one of the most feared sluggers in the game, hitting 379 home runs with 1,365 runs batted in and a career .297 batting average. Then, he made one mistake and it was as if all the homers, all the RBIs, all he had done before, was erased.

“When I retired, I was doing well money-wise,” he said. “I opened my own business. But sometimes, you feel empty when you leave the game. A lot of players have experienced the same thing.”

Once the cheering stops, adjustment to the real world can be a difficult task. In 1975, a year after he left baseball, Cepeda was arrested at the airport in San Juan while trying to pick up two packages. Inside the packages was a substantial supply of marijuana.

“Dumb,” he said. “It was bad judgment, like driving too fast and getting a traffic ticket, like getting drunk. It was carelessness. But, it happened.”

He was sentenced to five years in jail and served 10 months.

Despite his vast resume, the marijuana affair turned into a deep valley on Cepeda’s baseball graph. When he was released from prison, the game he once dominated didn’t want to know him anymore.

Three times, he called the Giants, looking for work. Three times, he was told there was nothing for him. Nothing for the man who once batted in the middle of their lineup surrounded by Hall of Famers named Mays and McCovey.

Don’t all us. We’ll call you.

“Once, in 1986, I went to Dodger Stadium and they kicked me off the field because I didn’t have credentials,” he said.

You want credentials?

How about 379 home runs?

They counted for nothing. That was then. This is now. Then, Cepeda was a star. Now, he was just another guy who had been sent away for bad judgment, a non-person in the game he once dominated. The sport that gave Steve Howe seven chances was finding it difficult to give Orlando Cepeda a second one.

“I was labeled a bad person,” Cepeda said. “That was the way people thought of me. I was bitter. I blamed everybody else for my problems.”

In 1978, his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot, Cepeda received 48 votes. The writers, it seemed, were frowning on him, too.

Gradually, the voting totals improved. Gradually, Cepeda began breaking down the barriers that one mistake had constructed. The turnaround, he said, came when he embraced Buddhism.

“From the moment I stepped into the temple, it changed my life,” he said. “It taught me to accept responsibility for my actions, not to blame others. There is a Buddhist term--change poison to medicine. That is what I try to do in my life.”

By 1989, the Giants had found a spot for the ex-slugger, naming him special assistant for player development. The job evolved into community relations.

That October, with tears streaming down his cheeks, he threw out the first ball at a playoff game in Candlestick Park. “It was the highlight of my life,” he said. “I was back where I belonged.”

Now, Cepeda is the Giants goodwill ambassador, traveling around, doing inner-city clinics, telling kids that all things are possible.

“I do everything, whatever they want,” he said. “I am grateful to them for what they did for me. I have been blessed. I’m lucky to be where I am.”

It is when he talks to young people that Cepeda is at his best. “I teach them what I have learned, not from books and magazines, but from experience. You make mistakes in life. You must change poison to medicine.”

Each year, Cepeda’s Hall of Fame votes have increased, from the almost token 48 in his first year to 252 last winter, 66 votes away from election in his next-to-last year on the ballot.

“It would be wonderful to get in,” he said. “Worrying about it gets you nowhere. I don’t worry.”

There are 18 retired players who hit more than 300 home runs and batted over .295. Seventeen of them are in the Hall of Fame.

Orlando Cepeda gets his final swing this winter.