Orlando Cepeda RIP

[Gil Bang 25551]

86 years old, and Charlie Brown's favorite player

[shadow_operative2.0 15726]

 

 

[Pato del Muerto 52036]

Damn rough time for giants fans. 
 

RIP. 

[chemHORN 1239]

Not a good month to be a former Giant.  

[WBT 20212]

Damn, RIP

[cochamps 1866]

RIP Cha-Cha. All the greats from my childhood-teens are just about gone.

[Beau Vine 53653]

11 hours ago, chemHORN said:

Not a good month to be a former Giant.  

John Montefusco had better watch his butt.

[WBT 20212]

11 hours ago, chemHORN said:

Not a good month to be a former Giant.  

Some kind of hellfish situation?

[VirginiaLonghorn 4722]

59 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

John Montefusco had better watch his butt.

I was thinking of Juan Marichal.

[Beau Vine 53653]

10 minutes ago, VirginiaLonghorn said:

I was thinking of Juan Marichal.

Definitely.  I thought he was already gone.

[TejasPedro 1848]

Quick, Can someone interview Reggie Jackson?

[DFW Horn 6028]

16 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

86 years old, and Charlie Brown's favorite player

Bullshit

How dare you disrespect Joe Schlabotnik like that.

[WBT 20212]

He was a Giants fan though.  Or at least had the common decency to hate the mf'n Yankees.

that shift though

[TheStoicPaisano 9786]

Rick Reuschel, still kicking.

[Beau Vine 53653]

JoePos:

Quote

When Orlando Cepeda was 17 years old, a friend of his father, named Pete Zorilla—a big man in Puerto Rican baseball—set up travel to a New York Giants baseball tryout happening in Melbourne, Fla. Young Orlando Cepeda lived for baseball. It was everything to him. “In Puerto Rico,” he would tell one reporter, “they raise some sugar cane, coffee and tobacco. I just play baseball.”

Orlando came upon his love naturally. His father, Perucho Cepeda, was, in the words of his son, “The greatest player in all of Latin America.” He was a shortstop and cleanup hitter who mixed the passion of Ty Cobb with the brute force of Babe Ruth, so much so that one of his nicknames was actually “Cobb Ruth.” Another was “El Toro.” The Bull.

Perucho Cepeda never came to the United States to play. He was too dark-skinned to play in the white major leagues and too proud and fierce to deal with all that it took to play in the Negro leagues. “He had neither the inclination to endure segregation nor the temperament to buck racism,” Orlando would write of his father.

But Orlando wanted to play in the United States. He wanted to play in the major leagues. It is true that in 1955, four of the biggest teams in baseball—the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers and Phillies—had not yet signed a Black player. And it is also true that in 1955, there had not yet been a big-league star from Puerto Rico. But there was hope, there was Jackie Robinson and there was Willie Mays and there was Minnie Miñoso and there was the dream.

Orlando Cepeda joined a group of players making their trip to Florida for the tryout. As it would turn out, that would become perhaps the most famous and bountiful baseball tryout in history… Cepeda was there, of course. So was another 17-year-old slugger named Willie McCovey. The lives of those two slugging first basemen would cross and intersect all the way to Cooperstown.

But here’s the big finish to the story: Cepeda was so young—and the players who came with him, such as José Pagán, were so young—that Zorilla felt like he needed to send an older player with them, someone with a little bit more maturity, somebody who could help guide them on their first trip to America.

So Zorilla picked a 20-year-old rookie outfielder to take the group to America.

That 20-year-old outfielder who escorted Orlando Cepeda to the baseball tryout that would change his life?

Spoiler

Roberto Clemente.

 

 

[Beau Vine 53653]

Orlando Cepeda is one of only six players in history to have:

1) Won a Rookie of the Year award

2) Won a Most Valuable Player award

3) Won a World Series

4) Been elected to the Hall of Fame.

Other five: Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Johnny Bench, Frank Robinson, and Cal Ripken. That's a pretty good list of players.

Albert Pujols, Justin Verlander, and Clayton Kershaw will join the list, when they are elected to the Hall of Fame when eligible.

Edited July 2 by Beau Vine
Brett didn't win RoY