Prince Fielder's greatest hits as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers include these 11 memorable moments
For seven years, Prince Fielder delivered a litany of memorable moments for the Milwaukee Brewers, usually in the form of a titanic home run. The first baseman joins the Brewers Walk of Fame on Aug. 6, marking the first inductee into the Brewers Hall of Fame equivalent since Geoff Jenkins in 2018.
The only two players with more home runs in Brewers history are Ryan Braun (352) and Robin Yount (251), but they've done that in significantly more plate appearances. Fielder had 230 blasts in 4,210 in a Brewers uniform; Braun had 7,340, and Yount had 12,249.
Fielder also developed a reputation for durability, playing at least 157 games in all six of his full seasons with the club and all 162 twice.
When you picture Prince, do you think of the "bowling ball" celebration? The walk-off winner against Pittsburgh in 2008? The inside-the-park home runs? The home run derby saga? Take a look back at the highlights of Fielder's illustrious Brewers career.
More: Fielder is now part of the Walk of Fame, an illustrious group of Brewers and Braves players
The bowling ball celebration
Sometimes it's as much about the aesthetics as the substance. Prince Fielder had both.
On Sept. 6, 2009, Fielder's solo shot in the 12th inning gave the Brewers a 2-1 win over San Francisco. As he circled the bases, Fielder pointed to the dugout as a signal to initiate some planned choreography hatched even before the season began.
As Fielder jumped onto home plate, his gathered teammates all fell backward like a bomb had exploded, leaving a triumphant Fielder standing in the midst of it all, holding his hands to the sky. It's perhaps the most iconic visual of Fielder's tenure.
The Giants, though? Not amused. They were miffed by the celebration and even dispatched Barry Zito to hit Fielder with a pitch ... the following spring training.
A prequel to a Wild Card
Fielder's booming home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to beat Pittsburgh might be regarded with higher fanfare were it not for a couple dramatic finishes immediately thereafter in the 2008 wild-card chase.
On Sept. 23, 2008, Fielder's blast gave him 100 RBI for the year, extended his hitting streak to 13 games and gave the Brewers a must-win over the Pirates in what would become a memorable three-game sweep near the end of the season.
Ryan Braun's walk-off grand slam two nights later would be immortalized as the defining highlight of that series, and Braun's eighth-inning blast on Sept. 28 helped the Brewers secure a win that gave the franchise its first playoff trip in 26 years.
More: The top 25 walk-off home runs in Brewers history
Inside the park homers ... twice
Fielder, a player standing 5-11 and perhaps generously listed at 275 pounds, was never going to have "speed" associated with his game, but the man knew how to take advantage of inertia.
Those who aren't Brewers fans might be stunned to learn he has two inside-the-park home runs on his résumé.
The first came June 17, 2007, against the Minnesota Twins, with an assist from outfielder Lew Ford, who lost the ball in the lights at the now-extinct Metrodome. Fielder hit a cool 50 home runs that year, but not without this beauty, although it came in the context of a loss.
A year later, he got another one — and the Brewers got a win this time, though just barely.
It was June 19, 2008, against the Blue Jays at Miller Park, with an assist from Alex Rios, who felt the ball had lodged in the outfield wall (though the umpire ruled it had not).
That game was particularly unforgettable. Not only did Fielder rumble around the bases, Dave Bush carried a no-hitter (and 8-0 lead) into the eighth, but the Blue Jays rallied for six runs in the ninth to nearly steal the game away. The Brewers prevailed, 8-7.
'...For the man who is Prince but will soon be king.'
Milwaukee staged a dramatic 7-6 win over the Minnesota Twins on June 25, 2005, an unforgettable showcase for the franchise's future. Fielder hit a three-run homer in the sixth against Jesse Crain for his first big-league home run, helping the Brewers take the lead. It happened to be the same game in which top second-base prospect Rickie Weeks also hit his first big-league home run, leading off the game against reigning Cy Young winner Johan Santana.
"From the moment Rickie signed with us (in 2003), he and Prince have been joined at the hip," then-Brewers manager Ned Yost said. "For those guys to hit their first homers on the same night, you just couldn’t have scripted it any better."
It led to a great call from TV announcer Daron Sutton, "Career home run No. 1 for the man who is Prince but will soon be king." Sutton was in town the Friday night before Fielder's Walk of Fame induction with the Brewers commemorating the 1982 team, featuring Sutton's late father, Don Sutton.
More: These 15 are among the best Brewers moments in interleague play
All-Star MVP
The fans at Chase Field in Arizona were not a fan of Prince Fielder.
Fielder, tabbed as one of the "captains" of the home run derby the night before, was able to assemble his squad from the National League and chose teammate Rickie Weeks — who made his one and only all-star appearance that season. That potentially came at the expense of Diamondbacks slugger Justin Upton, the hometown favorite who also had a case (though Weeks did have two more home runs than Upton at the break).
But in the fourth inning of the game itself, even with boos coming from the stands, Fielder struck for a three-run homer against Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson, an opposite-field shot that narrowly got out and netted him the game's MVP award when the National League won, 5-1.
"I don't know if I transformed the fans but I understood," Fielder said. "I didn't take it personally. No hard feelings. I know Justin Upton is their guy."
The boos continued into the postseason, when Milwaukee defeated Arizona in the National League Division Series, three games to two.
Playoff Prince
Fielder only had one hit in 17 plate appearances during the 2008 postseason, though it was a homer, but he hit three home runs in the 2011 postseason.
His two-run homer in the seventh doubled a 2-0 lead in Game 1 of the NLDS against Arizona en route to a 4-1 win, but the big blast came in the fifth of Game 1 in the NLCS, with Milwaukee playing its first championship-series game at home since an unforgettable Game 5 of the ALCS in 1982.
Braun had just hit a ground-rule double to score two runs and pull the Brewers within 5-4, and Fielder followed with a two-run laser-beam homer off Jaime Garcia that spotted the Brewers a 6-4 lead. Yuniesky Betancourt would add another two-run homer in the inning and the Brewers prevailed, 9-6.
Fielder also homered in Game 2, but the Brewers lost that contest — and the series in six games.
Winning the Derby
Prince Fielder won the annual Home Run Derby twice in his career, once with the Brewers and again with the Tigers. His first triumph came in 2009 in St. Louis, when he bested former teammate Nelson Cruz in the final round.
Fielder's home runs included one that traveled 503 feet and another estimated at 497.
"I've never hit a ball 500 feet before so that was pretty cool," said Fielder, who had a wait of nearly 1 ½ hours before hitting in the second round.
No. 50
Fielder was a monster in 2007, posting a 1.013 OPS and driving in 119 runs, on his way to third in the MVP voting. But the number everyone will remember is 50, the number of home runs he launched that year to set a franchise record.
Fielder, by the way, also has the second-most homers in a season when he hit 46 in 2009. Richie Sexson's 45 in 2001 and 2003, as well as Gorman Thomas' 45 in 1979, are the closest seasons to Fielder.
You'll never forget your ... second?
Most fans remember Fielder's first big-league homer in an unforgettable game against the Twins. But his second was just as momentous.
Fielder spent most of that 2005 season in Class AAA and only finished with two homers all year at the big-league level. But on Aug. 31, his two-run homer into the second deck against Jose Mesa turned a 5-4 deficit into a 6-5 win against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Brewers, who wound up securing a .500 record for the first time in 13 years, needed every win. The veteran Mesa was also there for a previous chapter of Brewers history, yielding Yount's 3,000th hit 13 years earlier.
Rocky Roll
OK, we've mentioned the other three walk-off homers in Fielder's Brewers career, so here's the fourth, and it's no less dramatic.
Facing the Rockies in one of Miller Park's craziest games, he settled a 7-6 victory on May 20, 2011, with a two-run, walk-off shot against Felipe Paulino. The Brewers had tied the game on a Casey McGehee home run in the eighth, given up the lead in the top of the 13th and then reclaimed it when Betancourt homered off Huston Street leading off the bottom half.
Colorado scored again in the 14th, but after Braun walked, Fielder sent everyone home happy with a titanic drive to right field.
'Too fat' for Moneyball?
That the Brewers were smart enough to draft Fielder in the first round of the 2002 MLB draft is an accomplishment in itself.
Even though he was the son of a major leaguer (Cecil Fielder) and had demonstrated prodigious power in his Florida high school, the seminal baseball text "Moneyball" had this uproarious nugget from that draft.
“Cecil Fielder could have swallowed Jeremy Brown whole and had room left for dessert, and the son apparently has an even more troubling weight problem than his father.
“Here’s an astonishing fact: Prince Fielder is too fat even for the Oakland A’s. Of no other baseball player in the whole of North America can this be said.”
The book traced Oakland's approach to finding talent in unusual places. They missed this one.
Bonus: The Body Issue
Fielder doesn't mind showing off the extra pounds, either.
His career may have been over in Milwaukee, but Brewers fans still took notice when Fielder bared all in the ESPN Magazine's annual "body issue" in 2014. He recreated the photo with a grilling twist in 2019.
Bonus: The Sausage Incident
Speaking of grilling, Fielder barely escaped a nasty collision in spring training of 2011 when he dodged a fleet of racing sausages at the spring-training complex in Arizona.
The man inside the Italian Sausage that day was Andrew Gruman, an intern at Arizona State who now works as the Brewers' senior coordinator of media relations.
JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or jradcliffe@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Prince Fielder's memorable highlights as member of Milwaukee Brewers
