The Tigers Have Spoken

A friend in Detroit sent me a link to the following article about Cecil Fielder's recent struggles with a gambling addiction and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The guy's destitute, his family hasn't really heard from him, and he's had this outrageous fall from fortune that makes MC Hammer's Behind the Music reveal look trivial.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem about the dual nature of greatness and fall from grace around 200 years ago and it's stuck with me since I first encountered it in 9th grade. Even those who have a weak stomach for poetry (as I do) would be hard pressed to argue that "Ozymandias" isn't lyrical perfection -- 14 lines that say everything that needs to be said on the subject with unflinching beauty and masterful economy. I think the author of the Detroit News postmortem must've had Shelley trapped in the recesses of his mind, too, particularly in the way he describes how Fielder's Florida mansion has suffered from neglect in the intervening years. Here's that poem for reference:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

You could stick those lines in a post about, say, Pete Rose or any other fallen idol for that matter -- but we're constantly reminded of Rose's greatness on the field. It's amazing how well the poem fits Fielder's legacy, though, especially since the memory of his 1990-93 run with the Tigers has fallen into a state of disrepair and neglect. Fielder's 1990 season, in particular, was electric -- he became the first major leaguer to bash 50 home runs since Big Red Machine cog George Foster in '77 and led the league in rbi, slugging percentage and total bases. Only Rickey Henderson did more damage at the plate.

Fielder's biggest impact on baseball, I think, remains unrecognized. His success in 1990 was directly responsible in motivating big league execs to look towards Japan as a viable source of talent for the major leagues. Before Fielder came back to the States, Japan was the place to go for the twilight of your career. Leon Lee played there. Bob Horner, too. But no one ever came back from the Land of the Rising Sun and kicked ass like Fielder. The Marlins took a cue and signed reclamation project Orestes Destrade to a plum contract in the immediate aftermath; a few years later, Hideo Nomo came to the Dodgers and busted the seal wide open. For me, Fielder's one of those guys -- like Curt Flood, I guess -- where his big contribution came from kicking off a chain reaction of important events. Pity it had to end up like this.