Going Like 50 : Tigers’ Fielder Close to Joining an Exclusive Club

Having hit 54 home runs in 1920 and 59 in 1921, Babe Ruth established 60 as the magic number in 1927.

Since then, like 20, 30 and 40, 50 has been a signpost on the way to that destination, each step a little more difficult.

How far the journey?

Consider that only 10 players have produced 50 or more home runs a total of 17 times.

Ruth did it four times. Jimmy Foxx, Ralph Kiner, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle did it twice. Hack Wilson, Hank Greenberg, Johnny Mize, Roger Maris and George Foster did it once, with Maris joining Ruth as the only players to reach 60 when he hit the record 61 in 1961.

Now comes Cecil Fielder, making the most unheralded bid yet. Or as Foster, the last to reach 50 when he hit 52 for the Cincinnati Reds in 1977, said by phone from his Greenwich, Conn., home:

“Cecil Fielder has come out of oblivion to show he can play in the major leagues. That alone his a great feat, and 50 makes it amazing.”

With 12 games to play after the Detroit Tigers beat the Angels, 12-5, at Anaheim Stadium Wednesday night, Fielder has a major league-leading 47 home runs and 120 runs batted in--not to mention the occasional temptation “to slap myself because it seems so much like a dream.”

Playing regularly for the first time in the majors, back from a season with Japan’s Hanshin Tigers and four seasons of part-time use by the Toronto Blue Jays, Fielder already has equaled the career highs of Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, Ernie Banks and Eddie Mathews for home runs in a season.

He needs one more to match the career highs of Willie Stargell, Mike Schmidt, Frank Howard and Dave Kingman, and two more to match Lou Gehrig, Harmon Killebrew, Ted Kluszewski, Frank Robinson, Andre Dawson and Mark McGwire.

Three, of course, will put him at 50--the most improbable of dreams considering he had hit only 31 homers in 506 at-bats with the Blue Jays before developing the confidence and comfort that came with playing regularly in Japan, where he appeared in 106 games last year, hitting 38 homers and driving in 81 runs.

A graduate of Nogales High, where he envisioned the magic of a backcourt role with the Lakers, Fielder’s story has been chronicled. He is a 6-foot-3, 230-pound first baseman, as soft-spoken as he is powerful, a candidate for the American League’s most valuable player award as well as a threat to hit 50 home runs.

He sat in the clubhouse at Anaheim Stadium and updated his feelings on this unlikely season and the bid for 50, which, he insisted, is not--and has not been--on his mind.

“My family is all fired up about it, but I keep telling them, ‘If it happens, it happens,’ ” Fielder said. “It would be great to hit 50, but I’m not going to put any pressure on myself because I’ll go one for 30 if I do.

“I mean, either way this has been Cecil Fielder’s year. I want to enjoy it and finish strong. I feel I’ve already proved myself to a lot of people who second-guessed the Tigers for signing me and said a lot of bad things about me personally. I don’t hold grudges, but I think I’ve proven them wrong.”

The Tigers, rebuffed by Kent Hrbek and Pete O’Brien in a winter bid for free-agent power hitters, signed Fielder to a two-year, $3-million contract that many considered folly.

Critics cited his lack of speed and mobility, making jokes about his weight. They questioned whether any player had ever returned successfully from Japan. They pointed out that he seldom had been more than a part-time pinch-hitter and designated hitter with the Blue Jays, whose general manager, Pat Gillick, described Fielder as a “non-athlete” and “base clogger” in an early season interview with The Times.

Now Fielder is enjoying a last laugh, his success putting him in position to reject a recent Tiger offer of $2.2 million for 1992. The market price for Canseco-like power is $3 million a year. However, the possibility of 50 homers as an additional bargaining tool didn’t influence McGwire to stick around for the final game of the 1987 season, when he mounted the last challenge to 50 as a rookie with the Oakland Athletics.

McGwire had hit his 49th in the A’s 157th game and was still looking for 50 on the eve of the finale, when he opted to skip it and return to Southern California, where Kathy McGwire, his wife at the time, was expecting their first child.

“My feeling was that I might have another chance to hit 50, but I’d never have another chance to be present for the birth of my first child, and that was more important to me,” said McGwire, who reached the hospital in time to share in the birth of his son, Matthew.

Besides, McGwire said, after hitting 33 homers by the All-Star break, all the talk was on the possibility of hitting 60 or of breaking Maris’ record.

“I’m not a big numbers person to start with, but no one was talking about 50 as if it was the goal--it was all 60, 61, 62,” he said. “Even when I got to 49, no one was asking me about 50, so I didn’t put much emphasis on it.

“I mean, I can’t imagine the roll someone would have to be on to hit 60. I hit 49 and went home every day feeling as if I just hit another and checking myself in the mirror to see if I was the same person. Yet I still fell 12 short (of tying Maris).

“The media pressure alone would be unbelievable. As it was, I think it got to me in August and affected my concentration. In a way, Cecil has had the advantage of being in an area where he doesn’t get that much media exposure and his team isn’t in the race.”

McGwire went on to become the first player to hit 30 or more homers in each of his first four full seasons. Foster, the last to hit 50, also established impeccable credentials that he says merit Hall of Fame acceptance. He said the one season of 52 homers has served to illuminate a career in which he also became only the sixth player to lead his league three consecutive years in RBIs.

“I never focused on 50, never made it a goal until I hit 49,” Foster said. “I had a shot at the triple crown the year before, got caught up trying to do too much and tailed off badly.

“I learned you can’t let anything change your approach, so I went out that winter and tried to get in the best physical and mental shape possible and really focused on consistency in ’77.

“I mean, I was never regarded as the type hitter who could hit the ball out of the park that frequently, so to do something that only nine other people had done was a great thrill for me. But I was also proud of the fact that I led the league in RBIs, runs and slugging percentage that year and had a career-best batting average.

“It was also satisfying to come back and hit 40 homers and drive in 120 runs the next year, when pitchers didn’t give me much to hit and I didn’t have Johnny Bench hitting behind me that often. The team started to break up in ’78 and the lineup was never the same.”

Foster acknowledged that as a member of the Big Red Machine he had protection in the lineup and stimulation in the clubhouse. Fielder’s presence in the cleanup role has benefited Alan Trammell, who is batting .313 with 88 RBIs as the No. 3 Detroit hitter, but Fielder has lacked similar protection, which in part explains a tendency to chase bad pitches.

He has 165 strikeouts, a league-leading .607 slugging percentage and a respectable batting average of .284.

“The man hacks,” Detroit Manager Sparky Anderson said of Fielder and his swing. “He’s like Canseco. He’s going to average 160 strikeouts because he don’t change nothing no matter what the count is.

“I don’t know if he’ll ever hit 40 or 50 homers again, but they’re not going to stop him from hitting 30 every year. Anyone who is as strong as he is and gets 600 at-bats is going to hit 30.”

As a hacker who is bidding to become the first Tiger to lead the American League in RBIs since Greenberg in 1946, Fielder has demonstrated impressive consistency. He has not gone more than three starts without a hit. He had not hit more than 11 or fewer than seven homers in any month through August. He had not driven in more than 25 or fewer than 19 runs in any of those months.

Detroit coach Vada Pinson, promoting Fielder for the most valuable player award over Rickey Henderson of the A’s, Kelly Gruber of the Blue Jays and Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox, pointed out that Fielder’s accomplishments are in spite of a lack of protection in the Detroit lineup and the club’s 103 losses of last year.

“He’s doing all this alone,” Pinson said. “He’s an MVP if I’ve ever seen one. We were in the graveyard last season with rigor mortis setting in. He’s brought us out of the graveyard, given us a chance.”

Anderson doesn’t dispute that but has long said that the MVP should come from a winning team.

“I’m not going to change now even if I have two players (Fielder and Trammell) who should be high in the voting,” Anderson said. “If Oakland wins, I don’t see how you can give it to anyone but Henderson.”

Fielder, who turns 27 Friday, said he agreed. Besides, he he has achieved more this year than any plaque can convey.

“I wanted to be appreciated,” he said. “I never had that in Toronto. They shipped me out, and I’ve come back to find a home here.

“It’s a great feeling, and sometimes I sit back and go ‘Wow, this is all unbelievable.’ ”

Fifty would enhance the disbelief. Fielder feigns disinterest. Sparky Anderson knows better.

“I think he cares about it because I know I would,” the manager said. “He’s human, isn’t he?”

THE 50-OR-MORE HOME RUN CLUB

YEAR PLAYER AB H AVG RBI SO HR HR/AB 1920 BABE RUTH 458 172 .376 137 80 54 11.8% 1921 BABE RUTH 540 204 .378 171 81 59 10.9% 1927 BABE RUTH 540 192 .356 164 89 60 11.1% 1928 BABE RUTH 536 173 .323 142 87 54 10.1% 1930 HACK WILSON 585 208 .356 190 84 56 9.6% 1932 JIMMY FOXX 585 213 .364 169 96 58 9.9% 1938 JIMMY FOXX 565 197 .349 175 76 50 8.8% 1938 HANK GREENBERG 556 175 .315 146 92 58 10.4% 1947 RALPH KINER 565 177 .313 127 81 51 9.0% 1947 JOHNNY MIZE 586 177 .302 138 42 51 8.7% 1949 RALPH KINER 549 170 .310 127 61 54 9.8% 1955 WILLIE MAYS 580 185 .319 127 60 51 8.8% 1956 MICKEY MANTLE 533 188 .353 130 99 52 9.8% 1961 ROGER MARIS 590 159 .269 142 67 61 10.3% 1961 MICKEY MANTLE 514 163 .317 128 112 54 10.5% 1965 WILLIE MAYS 558 177 .317 112 71 52 9.3% 1977 GEORGE FOSTER 615 197 .320 149 107 52 8.5%