Prince Fielder's legend continues to grow
Everything about Brewers slugger is big, bigger, BIGGEST
 Darren Hauck / AP Everything is big about Prince Fielder, including his prodigious swing. |
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"IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?" Prince Fielder bellows across Miller Park at third baseman Bill Hall. A throw from Hall has just smacked into Fielder's glove, apparently with insufficient mustard. Though this is infield practice, Fielder, in his outsized style, demands more.
Hall smiles as he picks up the next grounder and rifles it to Fielder. Well, not so much to him as in his general direction. The ball flies off-target and bangs off the portable fence set up to protect Fielder while he plays first base and teammates take batting practice.
The fence wobbles.
The fence falls.
"THAT'S POWER!" Fielder yells. Then he laughs — that big guffawing laugh, which starts at his shoulders and shakes down his body in waves.
Prince Fielder might be the only guy in the major leagues who can make infield practice worth watching. His batting practice certainly is appointment viewing. You never know how far he might hit one — or what craziness might come out of his mouth. Everything about Fielder is capitalized — big, bigger, BIGGEST — from his beefy frame to his oversized uniform to his prodigious home runs to his earth-shaking yells to his commanding presence on the field and in the dugout and clubhouse.
"When you walk into a room," Brewers teammate Craig Counsell says, "you know he's there."
THERE is more like it. And he's going other places nobody ever has. Last year, Fielder became the youngest player in major league history to hit 50 home runs in a season, and if he matches that total this year, he will have put together two 50-homer seasons at a younger age than any other player was when he had managed even one. At 23, he's in only his third full season, but "franchise record" and "in franchise history" are plastered all over his player bio. And if you think all of that's BIG, pull up a chair. There's LOTS more where that came from.
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When Fielder walked to the plate for his first professional at-bat in his first professional game in 2002, a buzz crackled through Lindquist Field in Ogden, Utah. He was barely out of high school, but he was Cecil Fielder's kid, the seventh overall pick in the draft, and big things — BIG THINGS — were expected of him.
He stepped into the batter's box. He squeezed that wooden club. He took a mighty swing, because that's the only kind he knows how to take, and he swung right out of his shoes -- a big flourishing, full-throttle swing ... and the crowd rose to its feet ... and bat and ball collided ... and seared into all those fans' minds for all time would be ...
(It long has been said of the game's greatest players that when they hit the ball, it sounds different coming off the bat. Like, if you listened as the 1940s Red Sox took batting practice, you would have been able to distinguish Ted Williams from everybody else. This has been said of Fielder, too, that it sounds different when he makes contact. When he hit the ball in that first professional at-bat, it sure sounded different because the end result of that mighty swing was ... )
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He beat it out for an infield single.
But later in that same game, he hit a game-tying grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning, an opposite-field blast that cleared the fence, the scoreboard and the street outside the stadium before landing in a parking lot.
"First, the (fans') reaction was gasping awe," says Dave Baggott, owner of the Ogden Raptors. "It was a couple second delay before they started to cheer."
ALSO ON THIS STORY |
Don Werner was the manager of the opposing team, Idaho Falls. "I didn't even think about, 'We just lost that game.' I just thought, 'What an incredible shot that was,' " says Werner, now a catching instructor in the Orioles' minor league system. "You were just in awe. When it went over the scoreboard, it wasn't dying. It was still going. It was ridiculous."
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