In the month of June, The Grandstander said good-bye to four Absent Friends, so why not start July off where we left off in June by bidding adieu to three such folks.
Orlando Cepeda (1937-2024)
it is ironic that the death of Orlando Cepeda, 86, came within days of the death of his San Francisco Giants teammate, Willie Mays. For so many years of my youth, the combination of Mays and Cepeda (and throw in Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal) made any game involving the Giants compelling and, if they were playing the Pirates, a source of dread.
Cepeda joined the Giants in 1957 and earned Rookie of the Honors. In 1961, he led the National League with 42 HR and 142 RBI. In the middle of his ninth season with the Giants in 1966, he was traded to the Cardinals and was instrumental in leading St. Louis to the NL pennant in 1967 and 1968. He was the NL MVP in 1967. He then spent three years with the Braves, and single seasons with the Athletics, Red Sox, and Royals, and he never really had a poor season. His career prorated over 162 games would produce this hitting line: 29 HR, 104 RBI, .297 BA, .849 OPS. He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999.
Numbers aside, I put Cepeda into this undefinable metric: In the ninth inning of game with the Pirates clinging to a one run lead, what opposing batter would I least like to see coming to the plate. Orlando Cepeda was one of those guys.
Bobby Grier (1933-2024)
Unless you grew up as a football fan in the City of Pittsburgh, and even more specifically, as a football fan of the Pitt Panthers, chances are you may not be familiar with the name of Bobby Grier, but his story is one that everyone should know.
He was the only African-American player on the 1954 Pitt football team that finished the season ranked 11th in the nation and was invited to play against Georgia Tech in the 1955 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. This was in a time when there were really only four Bowl Games to speak of, the Sugar being one of them, so this was a really big deal. Trouble was, segregation was the norm in the American South, and Bowl officials were queasy about having a black player on the field in New Orleans. To it's credit, Pitt said "Grier plays, or we don't come." The governor of Georgia wanted Georgia Tech to forfeit the game if Grier was allowed to play. (The "good old days" weren't always so good.) In the end, Grier played and the game went on.
I would urge everyone to read
THIS OBITUARY for Grier that appeared in today's
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but I would like to highlight these opening paragraphs:
Bobby Grier didn’t like to stand in the spotlight that his career as a trailblazing athlete created. Even after withstanding racism and becoming a central figure in the fight for Black civil rights, he was never one to make a show of himself.
Grier was held back because of his race but didn’t harbor any bitterness for it. He was a national celebrity because of his courage, but rejected fame. He had already accomplished so much while so young but still kept pushing to be the best athlete, soldier, worker and father he could possibly be. The insatiable determination to better himself and his family shined above his place in the history books to those who knew him.
I had the pleasure of meeting Bobby Grier at an event at the University of Pittsburgh honoring African-American athletes back in 2014. Well, "meet" might not be the right word, but I did get to shake his hand, and that was a pretty cool moment for me.
Remo Saraceni (1935-2024)
Learning about a person like Remo Saraceni is why I read the news obituaries and write about Absent Friends.
Here is why his death made the news. He was an inventor, and his most famous invention was the "Big Piano" upon which Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced in the FAO Schwartz toy store in the 1988 movie "Big." Surely you've seen it, but if not, HERE IT IS.
Okay, the big piano was why Saraceni's death made the papers, but what a back story he has.
He was born in Italy in 1935. He got his father into trouble with the law when he, young Remo, made a kite out of a poster of Mussolini! In 1964, he came to the United States to attend the New York World's Fair and here he stayed to seek a better livelihood. He had no friends, no savings, and spoke no English, but he found work as a television repairman and took off from there. He had a note on his bathroom mirror that said "America is where everything is possible."
It's a great story.
RIP Orlando Cepeda, Bobby Grier, and Remo Saraceni.
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