Back in the swing The Rangers’ Prince Fielder finds joy in baseball again through rest, rehab and family

WINDERMERE, Fla. — It begins with a home run. And a celebration. With the score tied at one in the bottom of the 12th inning on a late-summer afternoon, Prince Fielder turns on a flat split-fingered fastball from San Francisco’s Merkin Valdez and sends a laser toward right field. He does not watch the flight of the ball but sprints to first base, as he always does, until it is clear all that is needed is his home run trot. As he reaches second base, he yanks his jersey loose from the belt — something teammate Mike Cameron often did as a tribute to his father to signify the workday is over, after all — and keeps chugging as his teammates spill out of the dugout. As he reaches home with Milwaukee’s first walk-off home run of a long, unfulfilling season, he leaps toward the plate, surrounded by his teammates. When he lands, they all tumble over as if hit by a seismic wave. Fielder stands in the middle, arms outstretched. It is a whimsical celebration. They get up quickly and trot off the field, most of them still clapping Fielder on the back and shoulders. Here, on Sept. 6, 2009, is where the gloom begins. It remained for nearly five years. It begins with an injection. And then an incision. It is a late-spring day. The Rangers are making their first trip to Detroit since acquiring Fielder from the Tigers for Ian Kinsler in a swap of big contracts. Fielder, however, is back in Dallas. As he expected, an epidural injection to numb the ache at the base of his neck did not hold. He can’t even hold the bat all the way through his usually powerful, but violent, swing. He has already missed five consecutive games — more than the total missed in the previous six seasons combined. After pondering a second epidural, but only fleetingly, Fielder agrees to have surgery to fuse the problematic disc to another. It will force him to miss the rest of the 2014 season.

“I’m excited. Baseball was taken away from me. And I realized again how much fun it is to play. I never had fun like I should have. I’m not going to worry about dumb stuff anymore. They may not like me. But I’m going to have a lot of fun.”

Here, two weeks after his 30th birthday, Prince Fielder begins to once again find the joy in baseball. And life. Nearly eight months later, fully healed physically from the surgery, Fielder takes a sip of an energy drink that is subbing for his lunch between workouts on this bright January day and begins his explanation. “I’m excited,” he says, and there is real energy in his answer. “Baseball was taken away from me. And I realized again how much fun it is play. I never had fun like I should have. I’m not going to worry about dumb stuff anymore. “They may not like me,” he continues. “But I’m going to have a lot of fun.” The gloom settled upon Fielder almost as soon as he returned to the dugout following the homer. Veteran San Francisco reliever Bobby Howry called the celebration “unacceptable.” Giants hitting coach Carney Lansford called it a “mockery.” The Los Angeles Angels chimed in with perpetually sour John Lackey saying he “didn’t care for it.” Torii Hunter, then with the Angels, admitted he laughed after seeing the celebration, but also said if the incident had happened against his team, “he’d get crushed and then we’d try to fight him.” The words stung. When the teams met next six months later in spring training, the Giants’ Barry Zito hit Fielder with his first pitch. Your browser does not support iframes. It was especially painful for Fielder to be criticized by his peers. As the son of a former major leaguer, he grew up inside baseball’s cloistered community and thought he understood all the rules, written and otherwise. “He does care how he is perceived by his peers,” said longtime best friend Tony Gwynn Jr. “He is a sensitive dude. It bothered him.” What Fielder never could process — still can’t — is how he has ever disrespected the game. The entire team participated in the celebration. It was planned for whoever hit the first walk-off of the season. It just happened to be him. And he didn’t stare at the ball, never does. He runs hard on homers and groundouts. He runs hard and slides hard into second base every time. He shows up and plays every day the way very few players do. Between the start of his first full season in the majors and the homer celebration, only Jeff Francoeur and Adrian Gonzalez played more games than Fielder.


“After the homer, I started to get bitter,” Fielder says. “I didn’t see how if I played hard and played right, how celebrating — after the game was over — giving my team a win was insulting the integrity of the game. ... It didn’t make sense to me. It still doesn’t.” That, however, was only the start of a long, dark road for Fielder. Within two years, he would become a free agent, having at that point played more games than anybody else in the majors over the previous six seasons. He was one of five players with five consecutive 30-homer seasons. One of the others was also a free agent that winter: Albert Pujols. Pujols, four years older than Fielder, signed a 10-year, $240 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels early in the offseason. For another six weeks after that, Fielder sat on the market while executives and the media pondered his durability. Ironic, considering he led the majors in games played at the time. When he signed, it was for a year less and $26 million less than Pujols’ deal, but, as Fielder says, he was still being paid “a ridiculous” amount to play baseball. It’s one reason he feels it’s expected he play — and play hard — every day. The landing spot was Detroit, where his father, Cecil, had mashed home runs in the 1980s and ’90s. It’s burden enough living up to your father’s legacy, but at the time, Fielder and his father weren’t speaking. There were reported accusations that Cecil Fielder had mishandled and misappropriated a portion of the son’s $2.4 million signing bonus after he was drafted in 2002.

Life after 30 Since baseball expanded to a 162-game schedule for 1961, seven left-handed hitters, including Prince Fielder, have hit 250 or more homers before turning 30. A look at what those players did before 30 and after: Homeruns: Before 30 After 30 Total Ken Griffey Jr. Adam Dunn Prince Fielder Darryl Strawberry Reggie Jackson Barry Bonds Boog Powell

A perceived drop in power followed. He fell from 38 homers in his last year in Milwaukee to 30 in 2012 in Detroit. In 2013, as he started to notice occasional tightness in his neck and shoulder, Fielder’s power dropped more, to 25 homers. As the game became less fun and more of a burden, Fielder occasionally snapped at teammates. It boiled over to his life at home with wife, Chanel, whom he has known since high school. Of the change in Fielder over time, Chanel reflects: “Prince Fielder and Prince can’t be in the house at the same time. Prince Fielder stays at the field. You can’t bring that guy home.” When the end of the season finally came in the AL Championship Series, Fielder addressed the media with his sons, Jadyn and Haven, flanking him. “It’s not really tough, man. It’s over,” Fielder said. “I got kids I’ve got to take care of. I’ve got things I got to take care of. It’s over.” To Detroit fans, Fielder came across as uncaring. Fielder, however, said his intent was simply to be a responsible parent at that moment. “I think people wanted me to sound like I was dying over the loss,” Fielder says now. “But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t define me. My kids are looking at me during that interview, and one thing I tell them is not to whine or pout. And so now, I’m going to pout in front of everyone? No, that’s not how it is going to be.” A month after the ALCS, Detroit swapped Fielder for Kinsler. At his introductory news conference in Arlington, Fielder, with Chanel and the boys by his side, announced he’d be wearing uniform No. 84 for 2014. It was symbolic of the year he was born, and he said he was being reborn with a new start. Prince Fielder works out four hours a day as he rehabs from surgery that fused together two disks in his neck last year. His workout includes an hour of cardio with his wife, Chanel (pink headband), an hour of weight training, an hour of boxing and an hour or pilates, again with Chanel. The new start arrived, but only after 2014 officially ended. The numbers suggested something was wrong: Fielder hit just three homers in his first 150 at-bats as a Ranger. When he could no longer do pushups because the shoulder gave out on him, Fielder knew the ache was more than just tightness. When he saw the results of the MRI, he also understood the weakness wasn’t related to a loss in skill, which had been a real concern for him. An epidural injection failed to provide much relief and, so, surgery was the next step. The plan was to fuse the C-5 and C-6 discs to give him more stability in the neck, similar to the procedure quarterback Peyton Manning underwent in 2011 “He finally realized it was something that could be fixed,” Chanel Fielder says. “It eased away a lot of fears I don’t even think he knew he had.” The doctors, however, said nothing about the therapeutic value time away would provide. It provided a necessary break for Fielder to escape the melancholy that enveloped him whenever he stepped in the clubhouse. The surgery and the recovery period that followed allowed Fielder to escape the daily summer routine he’d known since he was 17. When the Rangers went on the road, Fielder would return to Orlando for a long weekend. He was able to attend Jadyn’s 10th birthday party with all of his son’s friends, which was a first. He was there all summer when Haven, 8, would rattle off different players’ stats. He was able to grasp and appreciate the boys’ distinct personalities. He was able to take Chanel for a long September birthday weekend to Paris, with fellow injured buddy C.C. Sabathia and his wife.