June 13th, 2005: Prince Fielder, the 7th overall pick in the 2002 draft, is making his Major-League debut. He is the starting DH, hitting 7th for the Milwaukee Brewers, and in the second inning, he swings at the first pitch he sees from Doug Waechter, grounding out to shortstop. Seven games later, with the Minnesota Twins in town, the Brewers are trailing 5-4 in the sixth inning. Fielder is summoned to pinch-hit, and pinch-hit he does: Jesse Crain is the first, but certainly not the last to allow a home run to Fielder. Though no one could know it at the time, the young slugger named after a pop star would go on hit a total of 319 career home runs. But in 2005, Fielder starts just 7 games, and hits only one more home run, this one another lead-taking pinch-hit job, this one a two-run walkoff against Jose Mesa and the Pirates.
July 18th, 2016: Rangers DH Prince Fielder comes to the plate in a game that his team is losing, 9-5. He is 0-for-3 in the game thus far, having grounded out in all three at-bats. No one could know it at the time, but Fielder’s last career hit has already been logged; a second-inning single the day before, against John Lackey at Wrigley Field. So too has that 319th home run come and gone, in the 6th inning of a July 6th loss to the Red Sox. Steven Wright had played the part of Jesse Crain’s bookend for that one. But here, in the 8th inning in Anaheim, Fielder will bat for what we will later learn is the last time.
The first pitch from J.C. Ramirez is a ball, low and outside at 97 miles per hour. Fielder watches it go by, steps back, puts his bat under his arm, and adjusts his gloves one last time. He spits, looks at his bat, taps it twice on the plate, and looks at Ramirez. The second pitch is also 97 miles an hour, also low and outside, but barely in the strike zone. Fielder swings and rolls it over to the right of first baseman Ji-Man Choi. Choi is right-handed, and in circling to position himself, he is unable to handle the bounce. The ball catches not enough glove to stop, but just enough to come to a stop shortly after it passes Choi, and before it reaches second baseman Johnny Giavotella.
At the moment when that ball skipped off Choi’s glove, Prince Fielder’s playing career was 11 years, one month, and five days, old, spanning $248,914,500 in contracts (though 96 million of that will be paid from 2017-2020). He is the son of Cecil Fielder, the barrel-chested slugger who, in 1990, returned from Japan and hit 51 home runs for the Detroit Tigers. It was the first time any player had hit over 50 home runs since George Foster had done so for the Cincinnati Reds in 1977. Prince was six years old when that 51st home run left Yankees stadium.
In the subsequent years, Cecil and Prince’s relationship was rocky. Cecil helped negotiate Prince’s first professional contract, but disputes over money, paired with stories of Cecil’s gambling and domestic problems, caused father and son to be estranged for years. When Prince would catch his dad in various statistical categories (in 2007, they become the first father-son duo to each hit 50 home runs in a season. In 2016, they become the first father-son duo to each surpass 1,000 career RBI. With his final home run, he tied his father in career home runs), he was polite to reporters, but reserved when it came to the significance of, and relationship with his father.
June 27th, 2016: after a lengthy rain delay, the Rangers are mounting a comeback at a time that is approaching 3am in the Bronx. Kirby Yates has taken over for Aroldis Chapman in the 9th, and the Yankees lead 6-5. Yates hits Ian Desmond and Nomar Mazara with pitches, then allows a two-run single to Adrian Beltre and hits Fielder with his third errant pitch of the inning.
If you trace the line of Cecil Fielder’s 50th home run, and instead of stopping where it landed, you just keep going, you will leave the site of old Yankees stadium, cross a few rows of parking, and enter the new Yankees stadium, arriving in the right field bleachers. If you are there when Fielder is hit by that pitch, that would make you one of about forty people remaining in the stands. Two of those are Prince Fielder’s son Jadyn and Adrian Beltre’s son A.J. It is well past two in the morning, and they are cheering in an appropriately delirious fashion.
Jadyn, and his brother Haven, Fielder’s sons, are regulars in the clubhouse, just as he once was. They star with him in team commercials, shag fly balls in the outfield during batting practice, and wage Playstation battles in the long hours between arrival and the game. They are experts at staying busy in the clubhouse.
In that same clubhouse after home games, you will often see the media milling around waiting for that night’s starting pitcher to emerge to answer the same questions on that night's success or failure. It is a monotony, and any out-of-the-ordinary conversation is a welcome diversion. After one game this season, that diversion comes in the form of Fielder having an extended conversation with two small kids; catcher Bryan Holaday’s young sons. The two boys refuse to call Prince anything but the combination of his first and last name, even though the conversation is at least five minutes old. “Hey Prince Fielder, I like your pants!” “Hey Prince Fielder, your shirt is ugly!” “Hey Prince Fielder, what kind of shoes are those!” Fielder answers each one in his gentle and softspoken fashion “Thanks, I like yours too!” “What? This shirt is dope, man!” “These are dress-up shoes.”
“Hey Prince Fielder, why do you have so many tattoos?”
The answer is no less gentle, but even through the broad smile, the answer carries a wistful vulnerability afforded to the small kids of a teammate that reporters do not often see.
“I don’t know man… parental issues.”
Fielder has endured the embattled relationship with his father, a public divorce and reconciliation, the endless taunts of trolls, both online and off, who suggest that he is too fat to be productive or stay healthy. And yet, for the five years prior to coming to Texas, starting with the 2009 campaign in which he hit 46 home runs and drove in 141 RBI, Fielder missed a total of one game, playing baseball with a signature joie de vivre that would mark his entire career. He was the lovable, huggable home run darling of Milwaukee, until he signed with Detroit before the 2012 season. He was the lovable, huggable home run darling of Detroit until his poor postseason performance and comments about how he was not personally devastated at losing in the playoffs rubbed some fans the wrong way.
He never got the chance to really be the lovable huggable darling of Arlington. Traded straight up for Ian Kinsler, the move was two-fold. Bring in a durable left-handed power hitter to replace Josh Hamilton, and create room for prospect phenom Jurickson Profar. But Fielder, uncharacteristically, struggled, for the first 42 games of 2014, and then missed the rest of the season when it was announced that he had a herniated disc between the C5 and C6 discs in his neck that would require cervical fusion surgery.
In the time between the surgery and his return, Prince told reporters later, he rediscovered an appreciation for life, an enjoyment for the game; he admitted that baseball had become somewhat of a chore for him, and the time away, with Jadyn, Haven, and his wife Chanel had been invigorating for him. He had, after all, been in stadiums since he was old enough to walk. When he was 12 years old, he hit a batting practice home run into the Upper Deck of Tigers stadium. He has never not had baseball, and the time away seemed to do him good.
When he returned, he was an All-Star, hitting .349 from April through June, and making the All-Star game. The power wasn’t really back, but his productivity, at least, seemed to be. From July through season’s end, he hit just .266, but still, his year-end tally of .305, with 23 home runs and 98 RBI was enough to earn him the American League Comeback Player of the Year award, finishing 13th in MVP voting.
Then came 2016, and the struggle that Fielder could not shake. His batting average was sub-.200 as late as June 17th, his 68th game of the year. Occasionally, he would drive in a few runs, get a few hits in a bunch, or hit a home run that resembled the Prince of old, but the renaissance never lasted more than a few days at a time. His manager defended his “body of work” and praised the veteran for working harder than anyone, even suggesting that the slump would be good for Fielder, since he had never been forced to learn to overcome a slump like most big leaguers.
That was true. Fielder had always been so talented that his slumps had been short. But not this one. This one would last until July 17th, the 8th inning, and a ground ball to Ji-Man Choi.
Fielder is running out of the box, but when the ball skips off Choi’s glove, the 32-year old’s shoulders come up a little, and his pace becomes more urgent. He is, for one final time, #SprintsFielder.
Giavotella’s arrival at the ball is too late, and his bare-handed scoop-and-flip is wide. Fielder is safe on an E3. He will later move to second when Ryan Rua is hit by a pitch. When Nomar Mazara grounds out to Choi, this opportunity fielded cleanly by the first baseman, Fielder is stranded at second. He walks off the field for what would be the final time.
Later that week, he confides in team officials that has been experiencing weakness in his arm for some time, a symptom similar to his previous condition. He is examined by Dr. Robert Watkins in Los Angeles, who recommends that Fielder undergo a second spinal fusion surgery, this one just above the previous disc, at C4/C5. It is not life-threatening, but as far as playing baseball again, the writing is on the wall. He flies to Texas to get a second opinion from Dr. Drew Dossett, who performed the first surgery, but Dr. Dossett was trained by Dr. Watkins. The outlook is grim.
In the coming weeks, it is announced that Fielder will have the surgery. On July 29th, the procedure was done, and went “as well as expected”, according to team officials. Fielder would stay overnight at the hospital, and wear a neck brace for two weeks. He would miss the remainder of the season.
On August 9th, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports broke the news: Fielder’s career was, in fact, over. Doctors would not clear him to play baseball again, citing risk of further injury. A press conference would be held on the 10th.
There is no way to tie a neat bow on the story. The ending was sudden, unexpected, severe. It was sad, and while life is so much bigger than just baseball, you can’t help but feel for the kid that homered into the upper deck before he was a teenager, the Dad who brought his kids to work every day, the man who has always had baseball, and would now have to find something else to do. He did not leave the game on his own terms; the powerful body that gave him baseball had now betrayed him and taken it away.
It is a reminder of the harsh truth that life is not fair, and youth doesn't even get you halfway through it. It is also, hopefully, a reminder that there is more, that baseball is only a part of even the most baseball-centric lives. Chanel, Jadyn, and Haven's lives will change now, too. No more clubhouses, no more playstation in the clubhouse, and no more shagging fly balls in the outfields of Major League parks.
...for now.
