Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back - Hardcover

Cepeda, Orlando

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087833212X ISBN 13: 9780878332120

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing, 1998

Synopsis

Orlando Cepeda enjoyed a stellar baseball career in the late fifties and throughout the sixties, but after it ended in the mid-seventies, his life fell apart. In Baby Bull, Cepeda shares his story for the first time. He reflects on his baseball career and shares his twenty-year struggle to rebuild his life and regain his reputation.

About this title

Review:

A compelling presence on the field, Orlando Cepeda is equally compelling off of it. The only player to win unanimous Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player titles, the former slugging first baseman for the Giants and Cardinals was part of the first wave of Major League stars to come out of Puerto Rico in the 1950s, yet it's his postcareer that supplies Baby Bull with its power. After the fullness of a baseball life lived in the spotlight, Cepeda spiraled downward in the late '70s into shadows of his own making. Tapped out financially, carousing in discos, and deep into drugs, he served a prison sentence for smuggling marijuana before finally finding and righting himself through Buddhism: "All the records and cheers and the celebrity do not, and did not, create inner peace," Cepeda admits candidly. "Buddhism ... gave me the tools to turn my pain into medicine." Now back in baseball with the Giants as a kind of goodwill ambassador, and content as a husband and father, Cepeda looks back on a life worthy of a novel. Mercifully, he relates the story of his life without defensiveness, self-pity, or second- guessing. If it is, in part, a cautionary tale, it's at least a cautionary tale with a happy ending. --Jeff Silverman

About this edition

• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 087833212X
• ISBN 13: 9780878332120
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256