Fielder’s Son Grows Almost As Quickly As His Folklore

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Editor’s Note: The first time we wrote about Prince Fielder was in the Sept. 14-27, 1998 issue of Baseball America, which had a Baseball For The Ages feature. At the time Fielder ranked as one of the top three 14-year-old baseball players in the country (Kyle Davies ranked No. 1 for the age group). Alex Rodriguez was on the cover as the top 23-year-old in the game. 

The Prince Fielder legend starts with his mythically sized father Cecil, the Indians’ new first baseman/DH who is generously listed at 6-foot-3, 250 pounds.

Well at 5-foot-11, 220 pounds, Prince is close to Big Daddy territory. And he just turned 14 in May.

“Prince is big like his dad,” said Stacey Fielder, Prince’s mother and Cecil’s wife. “He’s got shoulders as wide as his daddy’s, and his back is as wide. But he can run. I was a track athlete, so he must have gotten his speed from me.”

Prince doesn’t get to race his dad and show off his speed anymore. “I raced him when I was 11,” Prince said. “He only beat me by a little bit. Now he doesn’t ever want to race anymore. He keeps saying he’s tired or worn out.”

Prince wears out pitchers the same way he wears out his father. A year after their last race, the lefthanded hitter was taking practice with his dad at Tiger Stadium. Using a wood bat, the 12-year-old Prince turned the heads of admiring big leaguers by reaching the upper deck.

“When he’s with me he’ll come to the ballpark and shag during BP,” Cecil said. “Hitting-wise he definitely had an idea of what’s he’s doing.”

A corner infielder, Prince has enrolled as a high school freshman at Florida Air Academy in Melbourne, one of the state’s top baseball programs. But Prince was never pushed into playing baseball. He played both baseball and basketball at St. Edwards Presbyterian School in Vero Beach the last two years and will play both sports in high school.

“To me the best part about him playing baseball is that he did it on his own,” Cecil said. “I didn’t encourage him to do it. He enjoys playing, and to me that’s very positive. He isn’t doing it because his father plays baseball. He’s doing it because he wants to do it, and he enjoys playing.”

Prince got hooked on the game while hanging around big league clubhouses. He also got hooked on emulating his father’s friends and teammates.

“Ken Griffey is my favorite player, other than my dad,” Prince said. “He can help his team win in so many ways. I like imitating him, too. He’s lefthanded, so that’s one reason. David Justice is another guy I like to imitate.”

The Fielders don’t expect to play together in the major leagues like the Griffeys did, but there are signs Prince has his eye on the big leagues. He says baseball is his favorite sport even though he was voted his team MVP in basketball. He spent the summer in Anaheim playing for a Colt League (13-14) team. Cecil says his son will likely play for a traveling Amateur Athletic Union team next year coached by Fielder’s former Tigers teammate Chet Lemon, who operates one of the nation’s most successful youth travel-team programs, Chet Lemon’s Juice, out of his St. Mary’s, Fla., headquarters.

“If he were to be eventually drafted by some team, that would be exciting to me, just like it would be exciting for any father,” Cecil said. “It would be nice to know that he has gotten to the point he can compete on that level.”

Correspondent Jim Ingraham contributed to this story.