Big League Trio Shined Bright In Huntsville 

They arrived in April 2004 as this enormous nova of hope, a trio of prospects who were to be the latest gallant heroes of the Huntsville Stars and the future of the moribund Milwaukee Brewers. They were all but conjoined into one mouthful of introduction – Princerickieandtony.

But hope turned into reality for Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks and Tony Gwynn Jr., which turned into the naked truth – and a little nakedness.

Really, who among us imagined – or wanted to – that Prince Fielder’s career would a decade later include a milestone where he posed nude on the cover of “ESPN The Magazine’s” annual body issue. There was the 5-11, 275-pound Prince, who was not exactly a lean, mean hitting machine, swinging a bat and wearing nothing but the graffiti wall of tattoos that was his upper body.

Others showing flesh in that particular issue were Michael Phelps, Venus Williams, NFL star Larry Fitzgerald and, as a cynic then noted, “a collection of snowboarders, surfers and bobsledders who are not exactly household names even in their own households.”

But we have gotten ahead of ourselves, and the naked truths of baseball reality and family drama and tragedy, and second acts in life.

In the days of robust media coverage, the Stars were deemed important enough to dispatch a correspondent to spring training. From there, readers were first introduced to a 20-year-old Prince Fielder, 21-year-old Tony Gwynn Jr., and 21-year-old Rickie Weeks.

Fielder was guarded, and shied away from questions about his father, Cecil Fielder, a slugging first baseman with 13 years in the majors and who had famously purchased a 50-room mansion, then the largest house in central Florida. He spoke instead as glowingly of one of his father’s teammates, the outfielder Chet Lemon, through whose youth league/travel ball teams the young Fielder flourished. Little did we know at the time of the naked truth of the Fielder family drama.

Conversely, Tony Gwynn Jr. was eager to talk about his father, the most elegant hitter of our lifetime. Anthony, as he was known in the Gwynn house, even arranged a telephone interview with his father. The elder Gwynn’s voice, by then familiar through his ESPN work, was eerily identical to his son’s.

Instinctively and maturely, Anthony Gwynn knew he’d never be the hitter his father was – few ever have been or will be – and was comfortable in the old man’s shadow.

Weeks, who had known Fielder in the central Florida youth league world, was a shy kid with a speech impediment who played outside the traditional baseball college spotlight. He was an infielder at Southern University, a historical black college in Baton Rouge, where he was mentored by ex-Atlanta farmhand Roger Cador. He was gracious, but he was economical in his words. That’s a trait that continued throughout his major league career. As Tampa Bay teammate Alex Cobb put it years later, in the sunset of Weeks’ career, “When Rickie says something, we listen.”

Weeks was the No. 2 pick in the draft, having put up unreal numbers at Southern.: .495 as a sophomore, .479 as a junior and a career average of .473, best in NCAA history. He won the Golden Spikes Award as the best player in college baseball.

Their arrival as a well-hyped threesome in the spring of 2004 mirrored that of the 2002 season in Huntsville, when manager Frank Kremblas, touted for his ability to work with prospects, could pencil into the lineup J.J. Hart, eventual Southern League MVP Corey Hart and Dave Krynzel. Alas, Hart was traded and enjoyed his best years in Baltimore, Hart had an 11-year career with modest numbers and Krynzel barely had the proverbial cup of coffee.

The 2004 Stars, frankly, were a disappointment. They finished 65-75. There was more overt concentration on player development – particularly for Fielder and Weeks – than on winning games. As Kremblas noted, Fielder especially had a tendency “to be Mr. Hero.” He was impatient at the plate.

There were dismal moments, but there were some meteoric streaks. Fielder once homered in four straight games and had a stretch of 13 games in which he hit safely 10 times, batted .411 and drove in 12 runs. Gwynn had a 14-game hitting streak. Weeks began the season going 6-for-8, including a 4-for-4, three-RBI performance in the second game of the season.

Prince finished the season with a .272 average, 23 homers and 78 RBIs in 135 games. Gwynn batted .243, stole 35 bases and played spectacular defense in centerfield. Weeks hit .259, with 35 doubles and 42 RBIs. Both Fielder and Weeks showed deficiencies on defense that could/would be refined.

Their Huntsville numbers would be a decent barometer for the days ahead in the majors:

Prince Fielder: .283 average, .506 slugging percentage, 319 homers, 1,028 RBIs in 1611 games over the course of 12 years, the last few with injuries likely related to his size.

Rickie Weeks: .246 average, 161 homers, 219 doubles, 474 RBIs over 14 seasons, with Milwaukee, Seattle and Tampa Bay. He’s back with Milwaukee now as part of the player development organization.

Tony Gwynn Jr.: .238 average over 685 games in eight seasons, with 80 stolen bases. He went from the Brewers to the Padres, then to the Dodgers and the Phillies. He’s in San Diego, doing broadcast work – where still sounds just like his father, who died in 2014, a victim of cancer that the family ties to use of smokeless tobacco.

What wasn’t revealed much in the summer of 2004 was Prince Fielder’s own complicated relationship with his father.

This isn’t the place to air a family’s dirty laundry, but it is an intrinsic part of the saga. Cecil Fielder ran up an enormous debt, mostly from gambling, but also his extravagance. He poached from Prince’s signing bonus. In 2002, a process server found the younger Fielder leaving a stadium in Beloit, Wis., and handed him paperwork regarding lawsuits filed against his father. Cecil and wife Stacey divorced.

The kid who grew up in Tiger Stadium alongside his father, gobsmacking the pro players with prodigious batting-practice homers as a 12-year-old, refused to see his father. Cecil often came to Huntsville, waiting outside the clubhouse in hopes of talking with his son, only to have teammates usher Prince out of the stadium elsewhere.

Huntsville media was respectful of the delicate situation, but the protective cocoon was gone once Prince reached the majors. Countless stories of the estrangement were published. “Their storybook life seemed headed for the happiest of endings … now it’s all gone,” The Detroit News once wrote.

After some brilliant days in Milwaukee, and winning the Home Run Derby in 2009 and All-Star Game MVP in 2011, Fielder was signed – ironically – with the Tigers as a free agent in 2012. The dirty laundry was truly on display. He was swapped to the Rangers in 2014, where injuries began to mount.

However, in those latter days of his career, the frosty relationship with his father began to thaw. Prince underwent counseling. He opened his arms and his heart to his father. It was still fragile, but the wounds were healing.

On July 6, 2016, Prince Fielder homered against the Red Sox for the last of his 319 career homers.

Cecil Fielder also had exactly 319 career homers in the majors.

Mark McCarter is a veteran sportswriter and the recipient of the 2022 Mel Allen Award, presented by the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. He’s the author of “Never a Bad Game: Fifty Years of the Southern League” and the upcoming “Pandamonium: The Inside Story of Baseball’s Return to the Rocket City.”