You’d think Prince Fielder would miss baseball after his career was cut short by neck injuries, but the former first baseman is living the life.
Fielder was forced to retire in August of the 2016 season when doctors told him he physically couldn’t play after undergoing his second spinal fusion surgery. But the 32-year-old has since recovered from the initial shock and is working out, spending more time with his family and enjoying life to the fullest.
And that even includes co-hosting a cooking show with his wife, Chanel, called “Fielder’s Choice.”
“I have a food show that’s going to be streaming on Netflix and Hulu,” Fielder recently told ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick. “It’s coming out around the beginning of spring training in March, I believe. It’s not just baseball people. It’s a mixture of baseball people, actors, musicians, chefs and whatnot. They bring out different dishes, and at the end of the show, I give the one I like the most the ‘Fielder’s choice.’ It’s good TV.”
Fielder said he actually got the idea of hosting a cooking show after baseball when he and a friend were going over his finances at the end of the 2015 season. It turns out Fielder and his family have been Food Network watchers for a while.
“When I was playing, my wife and kids would go on the road with me, and we would go to different lunch spots that we saw on ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,’ ” Fielder told Crasnick. “She would look something up on the Internet and find the best restaurants and these little sandwich and taco spots, and we would go there.”
As for returning to baseball in another capacity, Fielder, who finished his career with a .283 average and 319 home runs and averaged 32 home runs and 108 RBIs per season over 12 years, said he’d rather hang out with his family for now. He doesn’t feel as though he was robbed, either.
“To me, it’s kind of an awesome movie,” Fielder said. “It’s kind of glorious to say, ‘Oh man, this guy had his career cut short.’ I’m not calling myself Sandy Koufax by any means. I’m not in that caliber at all, but sometimes it has to end different. You don’t need to have a perfect ending to be happy. Write that down.”
Thumbnail photo via Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports Images
