A unanimous Rookie of the Year and MVP who also served time in a federal penitentiary for drug smuggling, then had a nine-foot bronze statue erected in his honor decades later. Orlando Cepeda, the Baby Bull, lived an impossible, chaotic arc that no box score can capture.

This deep dive traces his story of inheriting a stolen legacy, surviving segregation, hiding chronic pain, catastrophic choices, and profound redemption.

• Inheriting the mandate of his father Perucho, barred from the majors by race
• Navigating the Jim Crow South as a grieving, non-English-speaking teen
• Confronting a manager’s ban on speaking Spanish in the clubhouse
• Playing in secret agony and the pain management that led to a drug bust
• Thirty years of quiet redemption and Hall of Fame induction in 1999