Slugger’s Look Is Ruthian

Wait a minute! This is Yankee Stadium, right? That guy coming out of the dugout. Looks familiar, does he?

Can it be? Naw, it can’t be!

But, hold on a minute! That girth, that belly! Can belong only to one guy in the game, right!

You got it! It’s the Bambino! Come back to restore the greatness. Your scalp prickle a little bit does it?

You remember that story about the statue that comes to life? Maybe it could be that’s what’s happening here? Check those monuments in center field. See if the one slugged Babe Ruth is missing. See if he just walked off the marble and picked up a bat.

Well, of course, it can’t be. But, hey, this guy could be Babe Ruth! I mean, get a load of that silhouette. Kind of lumpy, portly. Just like the Babe there. Looks like he’s out of shape. Till, of course, you try to smuggle a fastball by him. This guy’s like that too. Get a load of him in batting practice. Ruthian. I mean, this guy was born to be a Yankee.

But, hold it! This guy hits right-handed. Forget it. Wrong side of the plate, sports fans. The Babe was left. They built this ballpark for him, in fact. So, even if he has the girth, even if he goes 290 on the hoof, even if he has that barrel chest, and looks as if he should go on a diet forthwith, this guy is, so to speak, an impostor.

On the other hand, maybe he isn’t altogether. One thing is sure: Cecil Grant Fielder is the new Bronx Bomber. Whether he’s the new Sultan of Swat remains to be seen.

You know, there are certain things you don’t do in baseball. I mean, you don’t bunt with two out, you don’t bunt your key slugger even with none out and two on, you don’t let a Tony Gwynn or a Henry Aaron or a Stan Musial beat you in a ballgame, you put ‘em on. You don’t send a right-handed relief pitcher to face a left-hander, you don’t play the outfield deep when a .230 hitter is up. And so on.

And you don’t send to Japan with a shrug a slugger so great that the very next year he becomes one of 14 guys in baseball history to hit 50 or more homers and becomes the first guy in 13 years to do it.

You don’t do it, that is, unless you are the Toronto Blue Jays. Can you believe it? They did!

They took a guy who had hit 32 home runs for them as a spot player in three years and they shipped him all the way to Japan.

It begs the question for the 500th time What’s-So- Smart- About- Major- League- Baseball?

All Fielder did, playing regularly, was hit 38 homers in 100 games in Nippon, batted .302 and wore out the outfielders over there.

The Blue Jays said ‘Oops!” but it was too late. Their mistake had been found out. All of a sudden, Fielder had his pick of major league teams to come back to.

He came back to Detroit to become the first 50-homer hitter in 13 years and the 14th ever, and he drove in 132 runs.

The next year, he hit 44 home runs and drove in 133. He hit 258 home runs in seven years and drove in 795, and what a player of his dimensions had been doing on an island in the Pacific is something for the Toronto brain trust to alibi. His career took the giant leap from the Japanese League to the World Series.

The Yankees got Fielder out of the futility of Detroit late this season and it was almost like being rescued from Japan. He hit 13 of his home runs as a Yankee and drove in 37 of his runs.

For the Yankees, it was a match made in heaven. In Game 3 of the division series with Baltimore, Fielder had one hit in 10 times up when he came to bat in the eighth inning with two on base and the Yankees leading, 3-2.

Fielder hit a Mike Mussina fastball into seats and it was one of the most important hits of the series.

At the batting cage before the start of Game 1 of the World Series Sunday night, Fielder was asked if he could explain his exile to Japan.

Fielder is not into blaming others for mistakes even when they involve him.

“You have to understand the Blue Jays had other people coming up,” he says earnestly. “I mean, they had [Fred] McGriff. Not long after that they let him go in that blockbuster trade with San Diego. They had [John] Olerud. They had an Upshaw, a Lankford. They had to make a decision some place. They made it with me.”

The Yankees, on balance, are glad of it.

Fielder, like the Yankees, had a night to forget in Game 1 of the Series. If it was a fight they would have stopped it. In some Little Leagues, they would have enforced the 10-run rule.

But even on a night when a 19-year-old named Jones was crashing the record books in space once reserved for Mickey Mantle, no less, Fielder was still nobody to trifle with. He hit the ball hard, pressing outfielders’ backs to the wall on three of his smashes.

In the first inning, Atlanta pitcher John Smoltz was hardly the dominant figure he became. He walked two batters with two out.

Fielder battled him, finally driving a long fly ball to right. The outfielder caught up to it but it was not the can o’ corn it might look like in the score book. After the game, Yankee Manager Joe Torre noted: “If Cecil gets just a little bit more wood on that ball, and we scored first, we might have had a very different ball game.” Even Smoltz agreed. “Thank God, he didn’t get all of it.”

Whatever happens, the best likelihood is that the island on which Fielder will spend the rest of his career is on the Atlantic, not the Pacific--Manhattan.