Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back

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