By Orlando Cepeda
Orlando Cepeda loved a stellar baseball profession within the overdue fifties and during the sixties, yet after it resulted in the mid-seventies, his lifestyles fell aside. In Baby Bull, Cepeda stocks his tale for the 1st time. He displays on his baseball profession and stocks his twenty-year fight to rebuild his lifestyles and regain his attractiveness.
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Extra resources for Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back
Example text
Because my father was a great baseball player, I grew up around baseball people. The only way my parents could get me to take a shower—or to stay home if that’s what they wanted—was to tell me an important ballplayer was coming to our house. Many of the great Negro League stars would play winter ball in Puerto Rico and in the other Latin countries. My father played alongside and against many all-time greats: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Leon Day, Silvio Garcia, and Roy Campanella, just to name a few.
454. He once went 4 for 4 in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees. His base hits came off Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi, two of the major leagues’ toughest pitchers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perucho Cepeda had all the tools to have been a major league superstar had the timing been right and the era been different. But two obstacles loomed. My father was a Latin superstar. But Puerto Rican big leaguers were a scarcity back then. More than 150 native-born Puerto Ricans have played Major League Baseball.
It looked like trouble, so I walked to the mound to see what I could do. He told me to relax, to just wait and see. Then he did it again: BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. He struck out the side. He was a nice man and a marvelous baseball player—one of the greatest pitchers ever. Then there was Josh Gibson. When I was a seventeen year old, Peter Zorilla, the owner of the Santurce club in Puerto Rico, compared me to a young Josh Gibson. True or not, it was a great compliment. As everyone familiar with baseball should know, Josh Gibson was a superb hitter.