Alex Espinoza of the Yuma Sun wrote a story about former slugger Cecil Fielder entitled “Fielder hoping to mend relationship with son.”
Within the article there are no real details about why Cecil Fielder and Prince Fielder are estranged, but the story does include a bunch of quotes from Cecil--including “can’t anybody say I didn’t give my son everything in the world"--that seem to paint Prince as the bad guy.
In reality Cecil Fielder gambled away millions of dollars while married to Prince Fielder’s mother, went through a very difficult divorce, and allegedly took $200,000 of an 18-year-old Prince’s signing bonus from the Brewers.
There are plenty of good reasons for Prince not wanting to have anything to do with his father, yet every year Cecil manages to get articles written about their relationship that portray him as the victim looking to repair a relationship. Seriously, here’s one from 2006 and one from 2007 and another from 2009. And there are more where those came from.
I’m sure Cecil isn’t all bad just as Prince isn’t all good, but if all someone knew about the situation came from today’s article in the Yuma Sun they’d think Prince was just being a jerk to his father and ... well, that simply isn’t true. Cecil Fielder goes out of his way to talk about his son while Prince Fielder goes out of his way not to talk about his father, and the media coverage of the situation reflects that. What happened is still what happened, though, and Cecil doing all the press in the world isn’t going to change that.
