Cecil Fielder

Cecil Fielder joined the New York Yankees at the July 31, 1996 trade deadline, brought in from Detroit to add right-handed thump to a lineup that couldn't hit lefties, and had a ring by that October. He's the guy who hit 51 home runs in 1990 -- a number nobody in baseball had touched since George Foster in 1977 -- and six years later he was a 32-year-old DH nicknamed "Big Daddy," riding the bench in Atlanta one night and starting at first base the next. He didn't fit the profile of a typical trade-deadline rental. He fit anyway.

Path to the Bronx

Fielder's road to superstardom ran through Japan, which isn't the normal route. He spent four seasons in Toronto (1985-1988) stuck behind Fred McGriff at first base, barely playing, and frustrated enough to sign with the Hanshin Tigers of Japan's Central League for 1989 rather than keep waiting for an opening that wasn't coming. He hit 38 homers batting cleanup for Hanshin. He came back a different hitter.

Detroit signed him for 1990, and the payoff was immediate and enormous: 51 home runs, 132 RBI, a runner-up finish in the AL MVP race, and a permanent place in the record books as the first player to reach 50 in a season since Foster's 52 (and the first American Leaguer since Mantle and Maris both cleared 50 in 1961). He hit numbers 50 and 51 on the final day of the season -- at Yankee Stadium, of all places, the ballpark he'd call home six years later. He led the AL in homers again in 1991 (44) and topped the league in RBI three straight years (1990-1992). Two MVP runner-up finishes. Three All-Star teams. By the mid-90s he was still a name, if not quite the same terror at the plate.

Yankees Career

The trade that brought him to New York happened about 90 minutes before the deadline: Yankees sent outfielder Ruben Sierra and minor-league pitcher Matt Drews to Detroit for Fielder, reportedly the first trade in MLB history involving two players who'd each already hit 220-plus career homers. (The Yankees also flipped Mark Hutton to Florida for reliever David Weathers that same day -- a separate move, easy to conflate with the Fielder deal since both landed on the same afternoon.)

Joe Torre wasn't shy about why he wanted him. "All the questions have been about left-handed pitching, left-handed pitching," Torre said after the deal. "This should neutralize things to really better our lineup." Fielder, for his part, sounded almost relieved to land somewhere with a real shot: he called it weird, then said he was relaxed and ready to help (a fair response for a guy who'd spent the back half of his career on teams going nowhere).

He gave the Yankees exactly what they traded for in 1996 -- 13 home runs and 37 RBI in 53 games down the stretch, enough thump to survive the AL East race and get to October. Then came the twist nobody expected: Tino Martinez, the Yankees' regular first baseman, went cold in the postseason (5-for-33 with one extra-base hit since the ALDS), and Torre benched him for Games 3, 4, and 5 of the World Series at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium, where the National League rules meant no DH and somebody had to sit. Fielder started at first instead. He hit .391 in the Series, and his RBI double in Game 5 drove in the only run of a 1-0 win. The Yankees closed the Braves out in six games -- their first title since 1978 -- and Big Daddy had a ring nobody saw coming when the trade was made.

What Came Next

1997 wasn't a repeat. Fielder played the entire season in pinstripes -- 98 games, 13 homers, a .260/.358/.410 line -- but the power was fading and the everyday at-bats were harder to come by (he was 33, and the league had started pitching around him more carefully than it used to). His Yankees contract ran out at the end of the year, and he left as a free agent that December, signing with the Angels. The Yankees, for what it's worth, kept right on winning without him -- three more titles followed by 2000.

Legacy

Fielder retired with 319 career home runs. His son Prince Fielder grew up around big-league clubhouses, became a middle-of-the-order force in his own right with Milwaukee, Detroit, and Texas, and finished his own career with 319 home runs. Same number. Different Fielder. Cecil and Prince are only the second father-son pair in MLB history to each clear 300 career homers (Bobby and Barry Bonds got there first), and they're the only father-son duo where both guys had a 50-homer season.

Tino Martinez went on to be the Yankees' first baseman for the rest of the dynasty, but for three games in Atlanta that October, it was Fielder's job. That's the kind of Yankees career this was -- brief, specific, and exactly what the team needed when it needed it.