He did not wear a raspberry beret

In my quest to serve my local readers, I am pleased to announce the following:

Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder was named the National League Player of the Week for the period ending May 6.

The Ontario, California native batted .440 (11-25), scored eight runs and had an on-base percentage of .553. He led the majors with 12 RBI and his four homers, .960 slugging percentage and 24 total bases tied him for the Major League lead. Fielder's Brewers currently have the best record in baseball at 21-10.

And yes, the last name is familiar:

As the son of former big-league slugger Cecil Fielder, from whom he is now estranged, Prince Fielder was under the baseball spotlight long before he swatted batting practice homers as a 12-year-old at Tiger Stadium.

Presumably the estrangement has to do with this story from a few years back:

[Cecil] Fielder is in hiding, with process servers stalking him. He is not in contact with his family, and many attempts by The Detroit News to reach him failed.

Why?

"Gambling caused Cecil Fielder's empire to collapse," said Al Arostegui, the Realtor who sold the Fielders their 50-room palace in Melbourne, Fla., in 1995 for $3.7 million.

"This isn't a story of a hero who went bad, but a hero who got sick. For Cecil, gambling is a disease; it's like a cancer of some sort that ate away his wealth."...

By the time Cecil made his first halting admissions to her that he had a problem, she says, their home had been foreclosed on by a bank, and a string of lawsuits and liens worth millions had been filed by creditors....

As Prince Fielder, then a husky, 18-year-old first-baseman for the Class A Beloit (Wis.) Snappers, trotted off the field after a home game one day in August 2002, a man stepped out from behind the bleachers to intercept him.

It wasn't a reporter or fan. It was a process server, who for months had been searching for his dad, who was living with his son at the time. The man shoved some papers into Prince Fielder's hands, naming his father as defendant in a $387,744 lawsuit.

Although Prince Fielder wasn't a defendant in the suit, the sins of the father — poor business decisions and an unstoppable gambling compulsion — had been visited upon the son, in the form of an extremely embarrassing incident....

Prince Fielder declined to be interviewed.

But let's return to happier news...happier, that is, if you're not Jim Tracy:

A determined Prince Fielder was one big problem for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday.

Fielder homered twice and scored the go-ahead run in the Milwaukee Brewers' 6-4 win over Pittsburgh.

"Obviously, Prince Fielder was very involved," Pirates manager Jim Tracy said. "He basically accounted for three of the four runs they got in the early stages of the game. And he also took a terrific at-bat against John Grabow."

princefielder

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