Orlando Cepeda (1937-), Outstanding Puerto Rican Outfielder, and 1958 NL Rookie of the Year

[DonRocks]

I wanted to get a quick thread going about the great Orlando Cepeda, mainly because of one interesting fact:

On Apr 15, 1958, Cepeda hit the first-ever major league home run on the West Coast.

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In 1993, the "Ted Williams Card Company" put out a set of 160 cards, which I was just given as a gift. My favorite thing about this set is that each card features a player - not necessarily a "great" player, but one who most baseball fans have heard of - and on the back, there are comments by Williams about that player which often feature one very interesting, unusual statistic (refer to Cepeda's 1958 home run).

Pulling another card out at random, I pulled out Matty Alou, and the statistic says, "his 231-hit outburst in '69 ranks 28th all-time, and was the most since Ducky Medwick's 237-hit campaign in 1937." (Williams is obviously referring to the National League here, as Kirby Puckett put up 234 in 1988.) Really interesting things like that which you'd have to hunt for with a microscope on a stat sheet - I think it's awesome.