Unlucky Prince Fielder forced to walk away from baseball at age 32
A few weeks ago, four at-bats from what apparently will be the end of his career, Prince Fielder said there were days, lot of days, when he no longer believed he could play the game.
He was in a chair in front of his usual locker in the visitor’s clubhouse at Angel Stadium, and the room was alive except for Prince, aware then the surgery to fix his neck and make him strong again had accomplished neither. He seemed weary of the relentless failure, weary of his frailty.
Once the baddest dude on the block, Prince looked up and said, almost apologetically, “It just kinda crept into my head, you know?”
He is 32, nearly three years younger than his father was when he left the game. He has hit 319 home runs, just as his father had, an astounding coincidence. Only a year ago he batted .305 and hit 23 home runs, remarkable given the scar from surgery had only just healed when he began. He has $24 million a year coming to him through 2020.
And so you looked at Prince Fielder, past the recent hundreds of punchless at-bats, and you said, “C’mon. Really?”
And he said, “It’s true, yes.”
On Wednesday, Fielder is expected to announce he physically can’t do it anymore. He tried after one cervical fusion surgery, which he endured 27 months ago. He can’t after the second, performed two weeks ago. The Texas Rangers scheduled a press conference for Wednesday, at which Fielder will report that his doctors refused to clear him as a result of a medical disability, that by playing he would risk further damage to his spine. This is not retirement, technically speaking. The Rangers are at least partially insured against such outcomes, and Fielder will receive the full value of his contract.
Those are the details, so no one is going to miss a mortgage payment, presumably, at least not for a very, very long time.
Fielder has been pretty lucky. He had a father who took him to big-league ballparks, into big-league clubhouses. He, too, became a big leaguer, better than his dad even. He played 12 seasons, was a regular All-Star, and was in a World Series. He has two sons. They were growing up like he was, in the shadow of their dad, and it will go on like that, only the venues will change. He made a ton of money. More, Prince Fielder laughed a lot. He had a good time on a baseball field, around people he liked. Just those few weeks ago, he changed the subject of a conversation twice to reveal his admiration for Adrian Beltre. Prince is a man who likes being around people like that, even draws strength from the experience of good men in times good and bad.
This, though, this is unlucky, and he will be sad for the years on a ball field he’ll leave undone, perhaps especially for what his boys will miss. He was a very good player, for six or seven years even a great one. He’ll remember his swing when it was just right, the very swing he chased this year, the one that should’ve held up well past now.
Instead, he leaves, which is not so much tragic as it is just a bummer. He would’ve had fun these next five or so years. It would’ve been fun to watch.
