MLB

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.

Bryce Harper hasn't played a day in the big leagues, and unfortunately for him there is only one way to go. It is opposite of up.

But if you want to bet on Harper as the second coming of Corey Patterson and Oddibe McDowell, you haven't been paying attention. The teenage hitter is a stone-cold killer with a bat in his hands, which is why fans in Washington will flock to Viera, Fla. -- one of the last remaining spring training outposts -- to see him and old man Stephen Strasburg (24 in July) next month.

Harper's as real as death, taxes and rush-hour traffic. As an 18-year-old, he put up an .894 OPS in his first pro season and then scorched the Arizona Fall League, driving in 26 runs in 25 games and assembling a slash line of .333/.400/.634.

DETROIT -- Even now, decades after each took his final mighty left-handed cut, their names cause a shudder.

If you were their fan or their teammate, it's a shudder of excitement, of admiration.

If you were a pitcher who had to get them out, it might be a shudder of dread.

The Orioles aren't hopeless. But it's difficult to imagine how they're going to restore the luster to this once-great franchise until Peter G. Angelos takes the first step off baseball's skid row.

He's got to admit he has a problem and ask for help.

Cal Ripken Jr. is ready any time the Orioles' owner is willing to swallow his apparently inexhaustible supply of pride and make his best effort to give Baltimore a winning baseball team again.

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.

Dear Babe: My grandfather passed away several years ago and left me a box of baseballs. One is a New York Yankees baseball covered with signatures. Here are some I can make out: Casey Stengel and Mickey Mantle on the sweet spot; Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Vic Raschi, Johnny Mize and Steve Kraly. -- Kent Tierney, Pleasanton, Calif.

Kraly was only with the Yankees at the tail end of the 1953 season, so that dates the ball.