Invading Cecil Fielder's Privacy, Pt. II



Following last Sunday's reports of financial woes for former Tigers/Blue Jays basher Cecil Fielder, the Detroit News' Fred Girard follows up with the power-hitter's side of the story. And sadly, more dirt.

Cecil Fielder, the Tigers slugger who became a home-run maestro in the 1990s, plans to repay the millions of dollars in debt he has run up.

And, he said, he was saddened to learn that his son, Prince, 20, and daughter, Ceclynn, 12, want no part of their father.

“I’m going to be a man about it,” Fielder said Tuesday about his debt-repayment plan, speaking on his cell phone from Atlanta, where he lives. “I’m going to take care of all my responsibilities. But I’m not going to talk another thing about it, because, at the end of the day, everything is going to be OK. That’s all you guys need to know, because the rest of it, that’s on me.”

The News, citing public records and interviews with family and business associates, reported that Fielder threw away more than $47 million — his family’s entire fortune — on bad business decisions and an unstoppable gambling compulsion.

Through all his troubles — a welter of debts, liens, lawsuits and process servers, and a bitter divorce dispute with his wife, Stacey — Fielder said at least he remained a good father.

“One thing I’ve got to say about this whole ordeal is that anybody that knows me knows I’m a good person and I would never, ever, do anything to neglect my children,” he said.

Ceclynn and Prince, however, disagree with that assessment.

“My dad ... I just don’t know him,” Ceclynn said in a telephone interview, speaking in the presence of her mother and brother.




“My father is dead to me,” said Prince Fielder (above), now a minor-league baseball player in the Milwaukee organization.

Cecil Fielder, 41, said he was saddened by his children’s remarks.

“The only thing I can say about my son, because I want you to know, like everybody else knows in Detroit, (is) that I have done everything in my power to make sure that boy has gotten to where he’s gotten,” Fielder said. “The little girl is a 12-year-old, she’s going to react the way her mother and her brother react, but, in his case? That kid has gotten everything I had to give, and for him to have that kind of comment, that’s sad. But in a divorce as brutal as this has been, it’s going to happen.

“This has been one of the worst periods of my life.”

Prince Fielder said his relationship with his father began deteriorating more than two years ago.

First, he said, his father kept $200,000 of Prince’s $2.4 million signing bonus without permission. Then, one of the many process servers chasing Cecil Fielder, and unable to find him, served papers on Prince instead, embarrassing him in front of his teammates and coaches.

But the final straw, he said, was when his sister went to Atlanta recently in an attempt to talk her father into giving more support to her mother. She found her father living in a $5,000-a-month penthouse with a woman. When Ceclynn called that situation unfair, and asked for more support for his mother, her father “slapped her in the face” in public, Prince Fielder said.

Cecil Fielder disputed the story.

“Ceclynn never got slapped in the face,” he said. “Her mother sent Ceclynn up to go to school here, and you know, I lived with a young lady. Ceclynn (was) in the beauty parlor — her mother sends her up here to get everything done so she doesn’t have to pay for anything. Anyway, Ceclynn got out of line and said some grown folks’ business.”

Posted: Thu - October 21, 2004 at 05:25 PM      

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