The X-Ray machine would show this . . . Willie Mays is the heart and soul of the San Francisco Giants; Orlando Cepeda gives the St. Louis Cardinals much-needed muscle.
There’s a difference and it’s measured in more than hits, home runs
and runs batted in. It’s that vital intangible called leadership.
It’s spirit and confidence and reliability.
| Cepeda also has heart to go with his muscle. Mays
certainly has muscle to back up the emotional drive with which he sets
the pace for the Giants. On the record, Willie gets a big number
over Orlando for past performance. But this is 1968 and the National
League pennant could well be determined by how these two great players
do in the final two months of the season.
“If Willie Mays has a normal season we can win it all,” was the opinion of San Francisco first baseman Willie McCovey, who is several light years away from being a pop-off type. “We need Mays’ leadership,” summed up Giant manager Herman Franks. “The club responds to it strongly and when Willie is playing his top game, the team moves with him. I am confident that in 1968 Willie once again is |
The National League race will likely be determined by Cepedea and Mays. |
A happy Cepeda, a unanimous choice for most valuable player in the National League in 1967, exuded confidence at the start of the ’68 campaign. He even went so far as to start a countdown after the Cards won two games. He had his teammates in the clubhouse chanting, “Only 100 to go,” meaning that 102 game probably would be enough for another pennant. This was Orlando, the Happiness Kid, leading the cheers in the clubhouse.
“So help me,” said Orlando, “this is the best ball club I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been with the Cards since May, 1968, and I’ve never seen a fight. You don’t read about it in the paper but fights break out in the locker room or on the bus or in the hotel. Players on the same team get mad and they fight. But not on the Cards. Not since I’ve been here.”
Willie Mays stands out over Orlando on career achievement so far, Willie obviously is on the far side of the hill at 37, an age plateau he reached in May. Cepeda will be 31 in September. That six and one-half year edge may serve Orlando well in the last two months of the current campaign. Defensively, Willie wins by a mile. He is a great fielder, Orlando is just a journeyman.
The two stars were teammates for eight season in San Francisco and a small piece of the ninth. That was in 1966. Cepeda was traded by the Giants to the Cardinals on May 8th of that year for southpaw Ray Sadecki.
Cepeda never played for the Giants in New York and joined the club in the first season in San Francisco, 1958. He was a big hit from the word go and was Rookie-of-the-Year in the National League. He also became the darling of the fans in San Francisco, who for some reason were slow to warm up to Mays. Willie had a fine year, batting .347 with 29 home runs. But Cepeda with a .312 mark and 25 circuit shots got the cheers from the home folks.
That probably was Orlando’s happiest year in San Francisco. He had first base all to himself. In July of 1959, Willie McCovey appeared on the scene and the Giants started a “who’s on first” affair. Cepeda and McCovey alternated at the base for years. Orlando was tried at third base and in the outfield when Willie held the fort at first.
McCovey had also played a lot of outfield and on one occasion Cepeda, trying to establish his claim to first base, stated in straight-face fashion, “Everybody knows McCovey is a better outfielder than I am.” Since the Giants held a secret theory that McCovey was also a better first baseman, they wound up trading Orlando. But not before he played some brilliant baseball for the Giants. He had his best season ever in 1961, the year the Reds won the pennant. Orlando hit .311 with a league-leading total of 46 home runs and 142 RBI’s, which also was the best in the circuit. Orlando topped Willie pretty good that year. Mays had a batting average of .308 with 40 homers and 123 runs driven in.
The following season, when the Giants won the flag, was Willie’s year. He hit .304 with a circuit-pacing total of 49 homers and 141 RBI’s.
A couple of years later, Cepeda developed knee trouble, which brought on surgery and a falling out with the front office. The Giant brass felt that Orlando was not putting out and his 1965 season, a batting average of .176 in 33 games, set the stage for the trade with St. Louis the following spring.
While Cepeda was going out of the Giant scheme of things, 1965 was being a near-miss year for the pennant in San Francisco, Mays was having a fabulous season with a .317 average, 52 homers to lead the league and 112 RBI’s. That won him second MVP award in the National League, an honor he also got in 1954, a pennant year for the Giants in New York.
Mays’ career totals are far over Cepeda in most areas, due in part to his greater age and experience. At the start of 1968, Willie was second on the all-time home run list with 564 and was expected to be flirting with the 600 mark by the end of the campaign. He was also climbing into the higher altitudes in things like total bases, extra base hits and RBI’s. Willie had a lifetime batting average of .309.
Cepeda also took a career batting average of .309 into the ’68 season and had 268 home runs, less than half Willie’s total. It is unlikely that Orlando will ever overhaul Mays in the home run column.
Last season was a walkaway for Cepeda in a matchup with Mays. Orlando wore the ball out all season, pacing the Cards to their runaway romp to the flag. He hit .325 with 25 homers and a league-pacing total of 111 runs driven in. This dwarfed Mays’ sub-par year, which saw Willie post his worst batting average for a full season, .263. He hit 22 home runs. Willie was hobbled by a pulled leg muscle in the spring and was flattened by the flu in July. He never regained his stride.
Mays was a worn-out player in the last two months of the season, dropping 20 points in his batting average. Cepeda, meanwhile, was at his best in the pressure month of August, hitting .352 and driving in 25 runs, getting Player-of-the-Month honors in the National League, as the Cardinals were putting the pennant in the deep freeze.
The month of July was the worst Mays experienced as a Giant. He failed to hit a home run. It was the first time he ever had a calendar month without nudging one out of the park.
It was obvious that baseball was drudgery to Mays in the closing weeks of ’67. But he was a new man this spring. He romped around the exhibition fields like a teen-ager and his entire attitude was different than it was last fall.
Some of the experts who follow the Giants from the vantage point of the press box were insisting this spring that Willie had changed his style, that he was hitting more to right field, doing more bunting and playing hit-and-run. Willie denied changing his batting stance in any way.
“I hit the ball all over,” he said. “I knock a lot of homers over the right field fence. I’m a swinger and that’s the way I’ll have to continue hitting.”
A veteran National League scout, the former pitcher Cal McLish, offered this opinion on the 1968 Mays: “The new concept on how to pitch Willie is all wrong. Some pitchers think hard stuff can be blown by him just because he’s 37 years old. It can’t. The way to work on Willie is to brush him back with a fast ball in tight, then curve him outside.”
Nobody much was offering opinions on how to pitch to Cepeda, who insisted he was a better batter with two strikes on him. Nobody keeps any records on that sort of thing but it may be true. Orlando is a free-swinging type and has been known to hit a pitch that’s high and outside over the left field fence . . . in the corner, yet.
Orlando has never been accused of being a batting stylist, although it is freely conceded that he is a great natural swinger. One of his secrets of hitting, passed on to the younger generation, is never to stick to the same bat. Orlando says he uses bats of varying lengths and weight, depending on how he feels.
The ebullient Cepeda, after a big day at the plate early in the season, told the press, “I’m like wine, the older I am, the better I get.” In the next breath he announced that the secret of his success was eating pure honey from the hills of his native Puerto Rico, which he insisted gave him super strength.
Orlando made a small concession to the fact that he has reached the thirty mark that he has reached the thirty mark, cutting his winter baseball this year to the barest minimum. He said that was one reason he got away to a fast start in the 1968 National League race.
One of Cepeda’s greatest admirers on another team is Luman Harris, manager of the Atlanta Braves who said . . . “He convinced me a long time ago that he’s a great hitter. The only way he could get better is to hit .400 and drive in 180 runs.”
Orlando is outgoing and likes to laugh but he is something less than a Bob Hope when it comes to spotting a needle. Before one game with the Braves earlier this year, he got one from Hank Aaron who told him he should drive in 300 runs with fellows like Curt Flood and Lou Brock batting ahead of him. That was so obvious it didn’t bear answering but Orlando was quick to comment after the game . . . “I noticed Aaron didn’t do so good tonight.”
In the material matter known as money, Mays still has a good edge over Cepeda. Willie is drawing down $125,000 for his endeavors this year, while Cepeda is working for $90,000. At last word, Orlando was counting on moving into the select $100,000 bracket if he comes even close to last year’s figures at the plate.
Orlando never misses a chance to point out how happy he is with the Cardinals and how unhappy he was in San Francisco. After signing his contract this year, he announced: “When I was with the Giants, we’d talk for three months and I still didn’t get what I wanted. In St. Louis I come in and they give me more than I expect.”
Despite his joy at playing for “El Birdos,” a name he hung on the Cardinals last year, Cepeda admits the St. Louis park is a tough one to hit in, especially if you are interested in home runs. He connected for only eight at home last year out of his total of 25.
Cepeda is a solid, long-ball hitter but does not approach Mays’ career slugging mark. Mays has a career slugging percentage of .583 which happens to be the best in the history of the National League. He has won the league slugging title five times, which is more than any active player. Last year he skidded to .453 in slugging while Cepeda posted a .524 percentage, fifth best in the league. Hank Aaron of the Braves led the league with .573.
His poor showing in 1967 spurred Mays to a tremendous effort during the off-season. He drilled relentlessly in a San Francisco gym to get in shape. And then he made an interesting, if somewhat painful, discovery. He went to the dentist, had a couple of bad teeth yanked and the man in the white jacket told him that the decayed molars may have been responsible for a lot of his 1967 miseries.
“After taking the teeth out the doctor told me they were pretty bad,” said Willie. “He explained to me what a bad tooth can do, how it can pour poison into the bloodstream and that it is difficult to get rid of it. It can make you feel lousy and dopey and draggy. I think that really was what wrong with me last year. All that poison. Right now I feel great. Like new again.”
After watching Mays romp around at the beginning of the season, owner Horace Stoneham of the Giants said . . . “Baseball is fun again for Willie and that is important.”
“Willie’s not through yet by a long shot,” observed Joe Gordon, one of the greats of the Yankees of the past. “He still has that snap in his wrists, that grace and flow in his running and that tremendous pride.”
Willie’s new lease on life gave him an optimistic slant on the 1968 pennant race which he summed up like this from the standpoint of the San Francisco club: “I think we can win the pennant if our reserve strength comes through. The first eight or nine guys we put on the field are pretty good.”
Although there is plenty of time left in the pennant race, the chances are excellent that either Cepeda or Mays will be in another World Series this fall. Oddly enough, despite their great hitting records, neither has been a fireball in Series competition.
Mays has played in the Classic in 1951, 1954 and 1962. He has been to bat 64 times with only 15 hits for a batting average of .234. He has never – repeat never – hit a home run in Series play. But ordinary as that record may be, it is far better than Cepeda’s World Series performances.
Orlando was the All-American out last fall as the Cards struggled to their seven-game Series win over the Red Sox. The Boston pitchers were knocking the bat out of Orlando’s hands, giving rise to the suspicion that perhaps he had run out of honey.
He made three hits in 29 AB’s for an average of .103. The only other time he played in a Series was in 1962 when he got three hits in 19 tries for the Giants against the Yanks. That was good for an average of .158. Orlando’s career Series’ batting average is a snappy .125.
Both of these players, of course, have the skill and power to tear a World Series apart. And if one of them gets a chance to try this fall, some American League pitching staff may suffer the consequences.