Baseball

This winter's free-agent class included a Prince (Fielder) who got a deal fit for a king and a reliever who came away looking like a pauper by major league salary standards.

Closer Ryan Madson nearly had a four-year, $44-million agreement with Philadelphia in November, but talks broke down and the Phillies signed Boston's Jonathan Papelbon for four years and $50 million.

After a whirlwind blitz of new teams and stadiums in recent years, Arizona's Cactus League will pause this spring and take a deep breath.

The biggest visible addition for purveyors of spring training, in fact, will be a player--superstar Albert Pujols, joining the Angels in Tempe after a decade training with the Cardinals in Florida. Yu Darvish will cause a stir in Surprise, where the Rangers train.

Dear Babe: I have a ticket stub from the Feb. 25, 1964, fight between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay (now Muhammad Ali) in Miami. I was there with my father -- really exciting.

-- Bob McGrath, Redding, Calif.

At his Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2005, Ryne Sandberg gravitated toward his people. Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken, Joe Morgan, Robin Yount. Second basemen, shortstops, guys who could play their position well and hit for average and hit it out of the park.

Two summers later, Sandberg naturally gravitated toward his people again at the annual ceremony. Only this time the names were guys like Tommy Lasorda and Earl Weaver -- ham-and-eggers as players, world champions as managers.

The 1962 New York Mets established a standard for ineptitude that remains mindboggling, even today.

Their first baseman once ripped a pitch into the outfield gap and raced to third base, where he arrived without a tag. The umpire ruled him out. Marv Throneberry, nicknamed "Marvelous," had failed to touch either first or second on his madcap dash around the bases.

DETROIT -- Prince Fielder was giving the Tigers a preview.

There he was, on a field in Lakeland, Fla., during spring training in 2002, a 17-year-old swatting baseballs over fences with such frequency that his father, Cecil, a slugger for seven seasons with the Tigers in the early 1990s, proclaimed afterward: "I'm giving the Tigers a preview."

But it was Prince hitting those balls and Prince turning those heads, much like he'd been doing throughout his childhood; first on Grosse Pointe, Mich., Little League fields, then at Tiger Stadium, then at Yankees spring training a few years later and then, on that February day in Lakeland, a few months before the plump prodigy would follow his plump parent into the major leagues.

DETROIT -- Free agent first baseman Prince Fielder and the Detroit Tigers agreed Tuesday on a nine-year, $214 million contract that fills the AL Central champions' need for a power hitter, a person familiar with the deal said.

CBS first reported the agreement. Fielder began his pro career with the Ogden Raptors.

The person told the Associated Press that the deal was subject to a physical. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the contract was not yet complete.

Detroit boldly stepped up in the Fielder sweepstakes after the recent knee injury to star Victor Martinez. A week ago, the Tigers announced that the productive designated hitter could miss the entire season after tearing his left ACL.