Remembering Orlando Cepeda (1937–2024), Who Made Music in the Majors

Willie Mays was already a superstar by the time the Giants moved across the country following the 1957 season, yet the denizens of San Francisco did not exactly embrace him. They took much more quickly to Orlando Cepeda, who homered against the Dodgers in his major league debut on April 15, 1958, the team’s first game at Seals Stadium, its temporary new home. The slugging 20-year-old first baseman, nicknamed “The Baby Bull” — in deference to his father Pedro “The Bull” Cepeda, a star player in his own right in their native Puerto Rico — was a perfect fit for San Francisco and its culture. He helped to infuse excitement into what had been a sixth-place team the year before, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1958 and kicking off a 17-year career that included an MVP award, a World Series championship, and an induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, not to mention a statue outside Oracle Park.

Sadly, 10 days after Mays’ death at the age of 93, the 86-year-old Cepeda passed away as well. The Giants and the Cepeda family announced his death on Friday night — fittingly, during a game against the Dodgers; fans at Oracle Park stood to observe a moment of silence. “Our beloved Orlando passed away peacefully at home this evening, listening to his favorite music and surrounded by his loved ones,” said Nydia Fernandez, his second of three wives, in the statement. No cause of death was provided.

As the second Black Puerto Rican to play in the AL or NL, after Roberto Clemente, Cepeda became a hero in his homeland as well as a favorite of Giants fans. He spent nine seasons with the Giants (1958-66) before trades to the Cardinals (1966–68) and Braves (1969–72), followed by brief stints with the A’s (1972), Red Sox (1973), and Royals (1974) at the tail end of his career. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound righty was a middle-of-the-lineup force on three pennant winners, including the 1967 champion Cardinals, and was selected for an All-Star team 11 times, including two per year from 1959–62; he was the first Puerto Rican player to start an All-Star Game in the first of those seasons. He was the first player to win both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards unanimously; Albert Pujols is the only one to replicate that feat. Cepeda finished his career with 2,351 hits, 379 homers, 142 steals, and a lifetime batting line of .297/.350/.499 (133 OPS+).

Not everything came easily for Cepeda. If not for the pitcher-friendliness of the Giants’ home ballparks — first Seals Stadium and then Candlestick Park — as well as a series of knee injuries that led to 10 surgeries, he might have hit at least 500 home runs. His path to the Hall of Fame took an extreme detour due to a conviction for smuggling marijuana, which resulted in a 10-month stint in federal prison as well as a humiliating fall from grace in Puerto Rico. Only after his release and his conversion to Buddhism was he able to rehabilitate his image and work his way back into the game’s good graces, a process that culminated with his election to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1999, 25 years after his final game. He was the second Puerto Rican player inducted, preceded only by Clemente.

“Orlando played the game with flamboyance,” said Peter Magowan in 1993, the year he led a group of investors to purchase the Giants from owner Bob Lurie and mounted a campaign for Cepeda’s election to the Hall. “He was an all-around player. He got our fans interested in the team.”

“Orlando overcame challenges throughout his life to build a Hall of Fame career,” said commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement. “This beloved figure from Puerto Rico was one of the many players of his era who helped turn baseball into a multicultural game. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to his family, his friends across our game, and his many fans in Puerto Rico, San Francisco, St. Louis, Atlanta and beyond.”

“I was forgiven,” Cepeda said during his Hall of Fame induction speech. “Everything was erased. Hardships are part of life, and I learned through the obstacles. But I knew it was going to be a beautiful ending. To me, going to the Hall of Fame, that seals everything.”

Orlando Manuel Cepeda Pennes was born on September 17, 1937 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, to Carmen Pennes and Pedro Anibal Cepeda. Born in 1906 (some sources say 1905) in Cataño, Puerto Rico, Pedro, also known as Perucho, was sometimes referred to as “the Babe Ruth of Puerto Rico” and “Babe Cobb.” Standing 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, he was an adept infielder whose best position was shortstop, and a high-average hitter with speed and aggressiveness on the basepaths, hence the Ty Cobb comparison. The Ruth comparison related less to his power than to his “taste for hard living,” as Myron Cope wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1966.

Perucho starred in various Caribbean leagues in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico from 1928–1950. He was the shortstop on the legendary Ciudad Trujillo Dragons, an all-star squad created in 1937 to promote the reelection of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo; Negro Leagues stars Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell were among his teammates, as well as dinner guests in the Cepeda home. Perucho hit .411 across a four-season span (1938–39 to ’42–43) and beat out Gibson for the Puerto Rico Professional Baseball League batting title in 1938–39. He had opportunities to come to the United States to play in the Negro Leagues but refused, recognizing that his volatile temper was a poor match for the racism and segregation he would face.

“He was afraid of the race thing,” Cepeda said in 2015. “He had such a bad temper. He said if somebody used a racial slur, he wouldn’t know what to do. So he didn’t want to come to the States.”

Playing in Puerto Rico, Perucho never earned more than $60 per week. He made more money working for the San Juan Water Authority, but his family — Carmen, Pedro Jr., Orlando, and two daughters from relationships with other women — nonetheless lived in poverty amid a crime-riddled neighborhood. His gambling and drinking didn’t help. Orlando inherited his father’s baseball talent; his childhood was dominated by the game, which rescued him from his grim surroundings. “Had it not been for baseball and the legacy of Perucho, I could have followed my boyhood pals into a world of crime, violence and hate,” he wrote in his 1998 autobiography, Baby Bull: From Hardball to Hard Time and Back.

At 15 years old, Orlando underwent surgery to correct for a bowed right leg caused by overwork at too young an age (some sources cite a basketball injury). While spending two months in the hospital and five more on crutches, he gained over 40 pounds and grew six inches; suddenly, he could hit for power. When he was 16, Pete Zorilla, who owned the Santurce Crabbers, invited him to be their batboy and to practice with the team. In the spring of 1955, Zorilla arranged for Cepeda to have a tryout with the New York Giants. Because he was just 17, he was chaperoned to Melbourne, Florida, by 20-year-old Roberto Clemente, who had starred for Santurce (alongside Mays) and was on his way to join the Pittsburgh Pirates after being plucked from the Dodgers’ system in the Rule 5 draft.

The Giants signed Orlando to a $500 bonus, but in a dark twist of fate, he spent that money almost immediately to cover his father’s funeral expenses. Perucho died on April 27, 1955, two days before his son was to make his professional debut with Salem (Virginia) in the Appalachian League. (Sources differ as to the cause, with cirrhosis of the liver and complications related to malaria both cited.)

Still just 17, Orlando didn’t speak any English. Lonely, miserable, and exposed to racial segregation under Jim Crow laws, he hit .247/.339/.366 in 26 games at Salem before being transferred to Kokomo of the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League. He took off there, hitting .393/.434/.634 with 21 home runs and 91 RBI across 92 games; both teams used him at third base, but he made a total of 43 errors at the position. By the next year, at St. Cloud of the Northern League, he was playing more first base than third, and attention was rightly on his bat as he hit .355/.406/.613 with 26 homers and 112 RBI, good enough to win the circuit’s Triple Crown. In 1957, he moved up to Triple-A Minneapolis, where he hit .309/.344/.508 with 25 homers and 108 RBI.

Early in the 1956 season, the Giants brought up Bill White to play first base, replacing the struggling Gail Harris. Signed out of Florida in 1953, the 22-year-old White hit a respectable .256/.321/.459 (108 OPS+) with 22 home runs, but his career was interrupted when he was drafted into the Army. He spent 1957 and part of ’58 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Veteran left fielder Whitey Lockman moved to first base in White’s stead, but by this point Lockman’s bat had faded.

It was all of a piece with the state of the team. Though the Giants had won the World Series in 1954, they had quickly fallen on hard times. With the Polo Grounds in need of renovation, and with the on-field product not in great shape either, attendance sank to last in the league. Struggling financially, owner Horace Stoneham explored moving the Giants to Minneapolis before agreeing to move to San Francisco in conjunction with Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley striking’s a deal with Los Angeles.

Help was on the way, however. New York Cubans owner Alex Pompez, whose team played in the Polo Grounds, had scouted Latin America on the Giants’ behalf. In 1950, the team hired him to oversee its Latin American scouting, eventually building a pipeline that would include Cepeda, pitcher Juan Marichal, the three outfield-playing Alou brothers, Felipe, Matty, and Jesús, and more. By the time of their cross-country move, the Giants had amassed stateside talent as well, and with little to lose and a new city to impress, manager Bill Rigney went ahead with the youth movement. Tutored by Lockman, Cepeda won the first base job during spring training in 1958, which gave rise to a story recounted so many times that a version made its way to a plaque on Cepeda’s statue:

Rigney: “What’s your assessment of Orlando?”

Lockman: “He’s a few years away.”

Rigney: “No! He’s ready now!”

Lockman: “A few years away… from the Hall of Fame.”

— Bill Rigney to Whitey Lockman, Spring Training 1958.

For the team’s opener — the first National League game ever played in California — Cepeda was one of there rookies making their debuts, along with third baseman Jim Davenport and right fielder Willie Kirkland; the next day, catcher Bob Schmidt debuted as well, and on June 8, Felipe Alou arrived. Cepeda grounded out and flied out in his first two plate appearances against the Dodgers’ Don Drysdale, but the Giants chased him in the fourth inning as they took a 6-0 lead. Facing Don Bessent in the fifth inning, Cepeda clubbed a solo home run to right field.

That was the first of 25 homers Cepeda hit for the season. He slashed .312/.342/.512 (125 OPS+), led the league in doubles (38), placed fourth in total bases (309) and RBI (96), sixth in steals (15), seventh in slugging percentage, and eighth in home runs while helping the Giants improve from 69-85 to 80-74, good for third in the NL. He was unanimously elected the NL Rookie of the Year and placed ninth in the MVP voting.

As a rookie, Cepeda lived with teammate Ruben Gomez, a Puerto Rico-born pitcher 10 years his senior, and his wife. During a brawl that season, Cepeda was fined $100 for grabbing a bat with the intention of coming to Gomez’s defense as the pitcher sparred with Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh following a hit-by-pitch; thankfully, Mays tackled Cepeda before he could do real damage.

Cepeda embraced San Francisco, and it embraced him. “Right from the beginning, I fell in love with the city,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1991:

“There was everything that I liked. We played more day games then, so I usually had at least two nights a week free. On Thursdays, I would always go to the Copacabana to hear the Latin music. On Sundays, after games, I’d go to the Jazz Workshop for the jam sessions. At the Blackhawk, I’d hear Miles Davis, John Coltrane…”

Cepeda gained another nickname, “Cha Cha,” sat in on the conga drums with Latin jazz musicians, and inspired a song called “Viva Cepeda” by bandleader and vibraphonist Cal Tjader.

Cepeda’s stellar play cost White his job. The former incumbent made just 36 plate appearances, mainly as a pinch-hitter, after being discharged from the Army in 1958. On March 25, 1959, he was traded to the Cardinals. Cepeda showed that his rookie season was no fluke, improving to .317/.355/.522 (134 OPS+) with 27 homers and 23 steals and making both All-Star teams. With the team in the midst of a three-way pennant race with the Braves and Dodgers, the Giants called up another first baseman, hulking 21-year-old lefty Willie McCovey, in late July. Rigney initially tried Cepeda, the more athletic of the two sluggers, at third base, but after he made three errors in four games he was moved to left field. McCovey earned unanimous NL Rookie of the Year honors by hitting .354/.429/.656 with 13 home runs in just 52 games, but even as they combined McCovey with the big bats of Cepeda and Mays, the Giants finished a close third in the NL race.

Though Cepeda was more or less average as a left fielder according to the defensive metrics, he did not like the move. “I just wasn’t ready mentally,” he told Fimrite. “I know I could’ve played left field if I’d put my mind to it, but I was only 21 years old and very sensitive. Friends and other players kept telling me I should demand to play first. It was all pride with me. And ignorance.”

Juggling the two sluggers contributed to Rigney’s downfall; he was fired 58 games into the 1960 season, a solid one for Cepeda but a disappointing one for McCovey, who was sent back to Triple-A at one point. The team moved into Candlestick Park that year, and the winds coming off the San Francisco Bay became a nightmare for hitters. Cepeda had to adjust his batting stance, according to a 1960 Sports Illustrated profile by Roy Terrell:

At the plate Cepeda stands up straight and relaxed, elbows away from his body, bat cocked close to his right ear. For two years he used an exaggerated closed stance, the left foot close to the plate, the right foot far back in the outside corner of the box. This produced tremendous, uncoiling action of the torso; it also placed Cepeda in a cramped position trying to handle an inside pitch, and major league pitchers needed only about 17 seconds to discover that. As a result, they were jamming him, pitching him tight… Cepeda’s new stance is only a slight modification of the old; this spring he moved his back foot in toward the plate a bit in order to see all pitches better and get a freer swing. In Candlestick Park, where there is little point in trying to blast a baseball into the gale blowing in from left field, the new stance helps Cepeda pump more balls into right center. No right-hand hitter is going to hit too many home runs in the Giants’ big new stadium, but Orlando’s average, like that of Mays, will almost certainly climb.

In 1961, Alvin Dark took over as manager and more or less split the playing time at first base evenly between the pair; McCovey battled injuries and sat against some lefties. Cepeda put together a huge season, hitting .311/.362/.609 (157 OPS+) while leading the NL in both homers (46) and RBI (142) as the Giants improved from 79-75 to 85-69; he was the runner-up in the MVP voting, behind Frank Robinson. Though he couldn’t match those individual statistics in 1962, his 35 home runs, 114 RBI, and 130 OPS+ helped San Francisco to a 103-62 record and a pennant. The Giants finished the newly lengthened 162-game schedule tied with the Dodgers at 101 wins, then beat their rivals in a best-of-three series that decided the pennant. Cepeda hit a solo homer off Larry Sherry in a series-opening 8-0 win, and went 1-for-4 with a single and a game-tying sacrifice fly in the ninth inning of the third game, part of a five-run rally that sent the Giants to face the Yankees in the World Series. Cepeda went just 3-for-19 during the seven-game classic, with all three of his hits and his two RBI coming against Whitey Ford in a 5-2 victory in Game 6. He was on deck when McCovey lined out to second base with two men in scoring position to end Game 7, hoping for a chance to be the hero.

Remarkably, Cepeda played through a right knee injury that season — traceable to a home plate collision with the Dodgers’ Johnny Roseboro in 1961 — missing just three of the team’s 165 games. He did it to prove a point to Dark, who tried to prevent the team’s large contingent of Latino players — Cepeda, Marichal, Jose Pagan, Manny Mota, the Alou brothers, and more — from speaking Spanish among themselves in the dugout or the clubhouse, and who believed Cepeda was giving less than full effort. “I think he was a vicious man,” Cepeda told Fimrite, adding that he “played two years in terrible pain just to prove to that man that a Latin could play hurt. I never said a word about being injured, and that was a mistake.”

Injury or no, Cepeda set a career high with a 165 OPS+ (.316/.366/.563) in 1963, then followed up with a 148 OPS+ (.304/.361/.539) in ’64, but things were coming to a head with Dark. “There are winning .275 hitters and losing .310 hitters,” said Dark at one point during the 1964 season while referring to an intangible point system he privately kept, based on clutch hits, moving runners over, missing signs or making baserunning mistakes; he publicly proclaimed that Mays and Davenport were the best on the team, and Cepeda among the worst.

Dark appointed Mays to be the first Black team captain in AL/NL history, a move that he hoped would defuse controversy centered around his increasingly charged statements regarding the racial makeup of the team. Tensions boiled over when the manager told Newsday’s Stan Isaacs, “We have trouble because we have so many Spanish-speaking and Negro players on the team. They are just not able to perform up to the white ballplayer when it comes to mental alertness. You can’t make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you get from white players.” Led by Cepeda, the Giants’ Black and Latino players threatened to boycott games. Mays interceded, explaining that Dark would likely get fired after the season anyway. “Don’t let the rednecks make a hero out of him,” advised Mays, who didn’t speak to the manager for the final two months of the season. Though the Giants won 90 games and pulled to within two games of first place with two to go, Dark was fired, replaced by coach Herman Franks.

Cepeda limped through spring training in 1965 due to inflammation in his right knee. He made just 40 plate appearances all season, mainly as a pinch-hitter, and spent three and a half months on the disabled list; he also clashed with Franks, who believed Cepeda wasn’t working hard enough to overcome his injury and who openly preferred McCovey as his first baseman. In December, Cepeda underwent surgery. He played sparingly at the start of 1966, with more time in left field than at first base. On May 8, he was traded to St. Louis for lefty Ray Sadecki — thus filling the void from when the Cardinals traded White to the Phillies the previous October. Disappointed at being dealt, Cepeda blamed Franks. “Herman is not my friend, I mean it,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Mark Mulvoy in 1967. “A trade is part of the game, but Herman did not trade me. He kicked me out.”

Despite his wounded pride, Cepeda instantly clicked with Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst, who told him he would bat cleanup and play first base, then got out of his way. In a much looser clubhouse than he’d enjoyed in San Francisco, Cepeda became the resident comedian, disc jockey, and neologist, christening the squad “El Birdos,” a nickname that particularly endures in some corners. “It is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me,” he told Mulvoy of the trade. Cepeda rebounded and finished the season hitting .301/.361/.473 (130 OPS+) with 20 home runs, earning Comeback Player of the Year honors. He was even better the next year, batting .325/.399/.524 while leading the league in RBI (111), ranking third in on-base percentage, fourth in OPS+ (164) and WAR (6.8), fifth in slugging percentage, sixth in batting average and ninth in homers (25). He made his first All-Star team since 1964 (and his final one), and was unanimously elected NL MVP. St. Louis won 101 games and the NL pennant, and while Cepeda went just 3-for-29 in the World Series against the Red Sox, the Cardinals won in seven games.

The Cardinals repeated as NL champions in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, but Cepeda slipped to 16 home runs and a 106 OPS+, both career worsts. He hit .250/.300/.464 in the World Series against the Tigers, with a three-run homer off Don McMahon in a Game 3 victory and a two-run shot off Mickey Lolich in the first inning of Game 5. At that point in the game, the Cardinals led 3-0 and just needed to hold on to clinch their second straight championship, but the Tigers rallied, winning the game and overcoming a three-games-to-one deficit to take the championship.

In March 1969, Cepeda was traded again, this time to the Braves in exchange for Joe Torre; the move reunited him with Felipe Alou and gave him the chance to play with Henry Aaron. Cepeda scuffled to a 109 OPS+ with 22 homers in 1969, but clubbed the 300th home run of his career on August 4, a solo shot off the Expos’ Jerry Robertson in Montreal. Despite his lackluster showing, the Braves won 93 games and finished first in the newly created NL West. In his best postseason showing, Cepeda went 5-for-11 with a pair of doubles and a two-run homer off Nolan Ryan, but the Mets swept the Braves nonetheless. While the Braves sank to 76 wins in 1970, the 32-year-old Cepeda hit .305/.365/.543 (136 OPS+) with 34 home runs and 111 RBI.

That proved to be Cepeda’s last big season. He was hitting .286/.344/.524 with 14 homers in 60 games as of June 16, 1971, but while at home, he injured his left knee, his healthier one up to that point. He played just 11 more games that season on either side of a DL stint, then underwent another surgery in September. He got a late start on the 1972 season, playing just once before April 30; while he hit .339/.379/.532 through his first 17 games, his knee problems prevented him from sustaining a spot in the lineup. After making just 25 plate appearances in June, he was traded to the A’s for a washed-up Denny McLain in what was basically a swap of bad contracts. (Cepeda’s $90,000 contract was the largest of his career.) After going 0-for-3 as a pinch-hitter, Cepeda went back to the DL, and didn’t play again for the A’s.

Despite the American League’s adoption of the designated hitter rule for the 1973 season — creating a role that an aging slugger such as Cepeda could fulfill without having to worry about defensive responsibilities — the penny-pinching A’s released Cepeda in December 1972. A month later, he signed with the Red Sox, and became their first DH; he never played another inning in the field during a regular season game. With Boston in 1973, he hit a respectable .289/.350/.444 with 20 home runs in 142 games, 40 more than he had played in all of 1971–72, and won the Designated Hitter of the Year award. But with a managerial change the following spring, and a youth movement that included Dwight Evans, Cecil Cooper, and — later that year — Fred Lynn and Jim Rice, Cepeda was released in late spring. He spent time with Leones de Yucatan in the Mexican League before catching on with the Royals, but he played just 33 games before being released near the end of the season. He was just two days past his 37th birthday, but he never played again.

On December 12, 1975, Cepeda and an associate were arrested at San Juan International Airport after claiming two cartons and two suitcases from Colombia that contained 165 pounds of marijuana. Charged with illegal possession of marijuana, he admitted to being a user — per his autobiography, he had begun self-medicating in 1965 when dealing with his knee injury — and said he had expected to pick up five pounds for use by himself and friends. “I learned that one mistake, in two seconds, can make a disaster that seems to last forever,” Cepeda told Sports Illustrated’s William Nack in 1999.

Further legal and financial problems followed. While on trial, he was arrested a second time for allegedly pointing a gun at a man. A suit from his first wife, Annie Pino, sought an increase in alimony and child support payments; the couple had divorced in 1973. In 1978 he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison; though paroled after serving 10 months in a minimum-security prison in Florida, he was broke and broken, a pariah in Puerto Rico. Cepeda was able to get a job as a hitting instructor with the White Sox in 1980, but was let go due to sporadic attendance. He moved his family to Los Angeles in 1984 and opened a baseball school, but that failed, and his second marriage, to Nydia Fernandez — with whom he had two children — fell apart as well. Of Fernandez, Cepeda told Fimrite, she was “a good woman who suffered right along with me.”

Amid his troubles, in 1984 Cepeda’s friend Rudy Regalado, a Venezuelan-born drummer and bandleader (not to be confused with the ballplayer of the same name), invited him to a meeting of his Buddhist sect, the Nichiren Shoshu. The practice quickly clicked with Cepeda. According to Fimrite:

He found new friends and a philosophy that seemed most miraculously to smooth the rough spots in his life, to curb a burgeoning persecution complex. He began chanting regularly and practicing the tenets of the Nichiren Shoshu religion. In Buddhism, he learned, “you don’t blame anybody. Any problems in your life, you alone have created. You learn that [everything] that happens in life is you. Only you can make the changes. Buddhism cleared the air for me. I discovered that winter always turns to spring.”

In 1986, Cepeda met Miriam Ortiz, who would become his third wife, and visited Candlestick Park for the first time since his career ended. A year later he appeared at a Giants fantasy camp, and in 1989, the team hired him as a special assistant for player development, a job that evolved into something of a goodwill ambassadorship as he scouted in Latin America and worked in community relations closer to home. The Candlestick Park crowd cheered him as he threw out the first pitch before Game 3 of the 1989 NLCS, and he was warmly received in Puerto Rico as well. (Miriam Ortiz Cepeda died in 2017. Cepeda is survived by Fernandez and five sons, Hector, Orlando Jr., Carl, Malcolm, and Ali.)

When a group of investors bought the Giants in 1993, Magowan pledged to do everything possible to help Cepeda gain entry to the Hall of Fame. He had become eligible via the BBWAA ballot in 1980, but between his comparatively modest counting stats and his legal woes, he debuted with just 12.5% of the vote, and didn’t break 20% until ’84, when he climbed to 30.8%. His support grew more robust as he rebuilt his public image; in 1992, his 13th year of eligibility (out of 15 at the time), he received 57.2%, and then 59.6% around the time that Magowan took over. In 1994, he received 73.5%, missing election by seven votes.

Finally, in 1999, Cepeda was elected by the Veterans Committee along with umpire Nestor Chylak, manager Frank Selee, and Negro Leagues pitcher Smokey Joe Williams. The Giants quickly announced they would retire his no. 30. While at the Hall of Fame for his pre-induction orientation, he discovered a picture of the legendary Ciudad Trujillo team that included his father. “It’s amazing. I didn’t know my father was here, in that picture, like he was waiting for me. What a surprise!” he told Nack.

Cepeda’s legal troubles and struggles with drugs weren’t completely over. In May 2007, according to The New York Times, police found cocaine, marijuana, and hypodermic syringes in his car when he was pulled over for speeding in Solano County, north of San Francisco. He was fined $100 after pleading no contest to possessing less than an ounce of marijuana. This incident doesn’t seem to have hurt his rehabilitated public image; if anything, his repaired reputation might have helped him. The prosecutor on the case was fired by the Solano district attorney, who indicated the prosecutor dropped the cocaine changes due to Cepeda’s status as a Giants legend.

In 2008, the Giants unveiled a statue of Cepeda at Oracle Park. He’s one of five Giants so honored, along with Mays, McCovey, Marichal, and Gaylord Perry — all Hall of Famers. “When things like this happen to you, that’s when I say to myself, ‘Orlando, you’re a very lucky person,’” Cepeda said after the unveiling. His affiliation with the team lasted for the remainder of his life. He got his beautiful ending.