CF: The Carrie Fischers

Infield: First baseman Cecil Fielder (1985-98) is listed at 230 pounds at baseballreference.com, and that may have been accurate during his rookie year, but in his prime he almost certainly topped three bills. He was a big fellow. He showed plenty of power as a young kid with the Blue Jays, but he came up at the same time as Fred McGriff and there wasn’t room for two first basemen, so Fielder headed for Japan in 1989 and banged out 38 home runs. The convinced the Detroit Tigers to sign him, and he rewarded them with 51 homers in 1990, followed by 44 the next year. He led the league in RBI three times, drew a good number of walks and was a pretty fair player for several years, finishing with 319 home runs and 1,008 RBI. He and his equally large (but much more mobile) son Prince are the only father-son combination to both hit 50 home runs in a season. Third baseman Chone Figgins (2002- ) hits for a decent average, has good speed and draws some walks. This, and his defensive versatility, once led John Kruk in one of his loopier moments to declare Figgins the best player in all of baseball. He was never anything close to that, but he had some pretty good years with the Angels. Signed a free agent contract with the Mariners in 2010 and immediately fell off the map. Second baseman Carlos Febles (1998-2005) showed some promise with the Royals, batting .256 at age 23 with 10 home runs and 20 steals. Those figures represented his ceiling, not his floor, and injuries ended his career before he turned 30. Cuban shortstop Chico Fernandez (1956-63) was originally lined up to be Pee Wee Reese’s heir apparent in Brooklyn, but that didn’t materialize. Instead he spent most of his career with the Phillies and the Tigers as a light-hitting semi-glove man. He hit 40 career home runs, half of which came in the 1962 season.

Outfield: Center fielder Curt Flood (1956-71) is known for two things: His spectacular defense and his quixotic attempt to challenge baseball’s reserve clause in the era immediately before free agency. Flood was a .300 hitter with moderate power and speed, and his extraordinary glove work in center was a key component of the great Cardinals teams of the 1960s. However, his uncharacteristic misplay – misjudging a fly ball by Jim Northrup that was ruled a triple – largely cost St. Louis the 1968 World Series. A year later, the Cardinals sent him to Philadelphia as part of a major, multi-player trade, and Flood refused to go. The Phillies were awful at the time, and they played in a run-down stadium, and Flood characterized their fans as belligerent and frequently racist. Demanding the right to negotiate a contract with other teams, he wrote: “After 12  years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes.” Commissioner Bowie Kuhn said that’s exactly what he was. The resulting lawsuit went to the U.S. Supreme Court and was decided in baseball’s favor, though the owners did agree to add the 10/5 rule, which said that a player who had 10 years in the majors and five with the same team earned the right to veto trades. After he sat out the 1970 season, the Phillies traded Flood to the Washington Senators, but he was a shell of his former self. He struggled at the plate and in the field, and after a few weeks he called it quits at age 33. A few years later, attacking the reserve clause from a different angle, pitcher Andy Messersmith succeeded where Flood had failed – he won his arbitration case against baseball and ushered in the era of free agency. While Flood’s unsuccessful challenge had no substantial effect on the subsequent decision, he was still held up by the players’ union as a noble martyr to the cause. Right fielder Carl Furillo (1946-60) was a key supporting player on the Boys of Summer Dodgers. His powerful throwing arm (and his Pennsylvania birthplace) earned  him the nickname The Reading Rifle. Furillo was a .300 hitter with mid-range power, and he played on seven pennant winners and two World Series champions. Left fielder Cliff Floyd (1993-2009) had more than a few highlights during his itinerant career. He had three seasons with more than 40 doubles, and he hit 233  home runs in his career. Floyd’s career was plagued by injuries and bizarre trades, but he managed to stick around for 17 years.

Catcher: Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk (1969-93) was a tough guy who gave new meaning to “old school.” As a New Englander playing for the Red Sox, he was royalty. In 1972, he won AL Rookie of the Year and the Gold Glove and finished fourth in the MVP voting. He was a monster at blocking the plate, and collisions led to injuries that threatened his career in the mid-1970s, but he battled back and ended up setting all sorts of longevity records for catchers. His 12^th-inning home run to end Game 6 of the 1975 World Series is the stuff of legend, and it changed the way that TV networks cover sporting events. In the midst of a contract dispute with Red Sox management, he bolted for Chicago (he called  it “changing his sox”) and for good measure, he inverted his uniform number from 27 in Boston to 72 in Chicago. He played with the White Sox until he was 45 years old, and though he departed both franchises under acrimonious circumstances, he remains a legend in both cities. He hit 376 home runs and was a smart enough ballplayer that as a 34-year-old catcher with bad knees, he stole 17 bases in 19 attempts. He was a great handler of pitchers and a force in the clubhouse. If you don’t like Carlton Fisk, you don’t like baseball.

Rotation: Chuck Finley (1986-2002) was a 6-foot-6 lefty who won 200 games and struck out 2,600 batters, mostly for the Angels. He never won 20, and he only received Cy Young votes one time (finishing seventh in 1990 when he won 18 games with a 2.40 ERA), but he was an awfully good and dependable pitcher for a long time. Odd baseball-related note: On three separate occasions, Finley struck out four batters in an inning. No one else has done it twice. Odd non-baseball note: He was married to music video sexpot Tawny Kitaen, but they divorced after she was charged with assaulting him (the charges were dismissed on the conditions that she went into counseling and never went near him again). Chick Fraser (1896-1909) had a career record of 175-212. He won 20 twice and lost 20 five times. Fraser led the league in walks three times, wild pitches twice and hit batsmen once but never led the league in any category that was not directly related to a lack of control. Cy Falkenberg (1903-17), a 6-foot-5 stringbean, was a very ordinary pitcher until his mid-30s, when he learned to throw the emery ball. That pitch, which was illegal, involved attaching a portion of an emery board to his glove and using it to scuff the baseball in order to make his pitches dip, dive and dart. Of his 130 career victories, 48 of them came in 1913-14 when he was dominating batters with his sneaky pitch. Cherokee Fisher (1871-78) won 56 games in a career that began after he fought in the Civil War. He twice led the National Association in ERA, if you can put faith in the statistical records of the 1870s. Lefty Carl Fischer (1930-37) was a consistently mediocre pitcher who bounced around the American League in the 1930s. He pitched in the minors into his 40s and won 184 games.

Bullpen: Cecil Ferguson (1906-11), who as a rookie saved a league-high seven games (retroactively figured), starts out as the team’s closer. His qualifications aren’t good, though he did finish 58 games in a career that was evenly split between the rotation and the pen. He went 5-23 for the Boston Braves at age 25 and was gone pretty quickly after that. Chad Fox (1997-2009) was never a closer during his big-league career, but he was a better pitcher than Ferguson and he had some decent seasons, so he look for him to press for the ninth-inning job. His best season came in 2001 when he had a 1.89 ERA for Milwaukee with 80 strikeouts in 67 innings. He also pitched very well down the stretch for the Marlins in 2003 and helped Florida to its second World Series title. Casey Fossum (2001-09), a lefty known as The Blade, won 40 games in his career, mostly for Boston and Tampa. Cliff “Mule” Fannin (1945-52) won 34 games as a swing man for the miserable post-war St. Louis Browns. Carlos Fisher (2008- ) hasn’t done much to distinguish himself at this point, but he still has a little gas left in his tank, so we’ll see. Curt Fullerton (1921-33) had a career record of 10-37. He actually only pitched for a few years in the majors. He was finished in 1925 but later came back to pitch a handful of games in 1933. In a long career in the Pacific Coast League, he won more than 100 games. Charlie Furbush (2011- ) is just getting started and could actually have a decent career. This bullpen could certainly use it.

 Bench: Infielder Chick Fewster (1917-27) played for some fine teams but was never more than a mediocre role player. Outfielder Curt Ford (1985-90) got called up by the Cardinals for the stretch drive of 1985, and he responded with six hits and four walks in 16 plate appearances. He never really did anything after that. Backup catcher Chris Fulmer (1884-89) played several years for the prehistoric Baltimore Orioles. Infielder Chick Fulmer (1871-84) played around the same time as Chris Fulmer, and they both came from Pennsylvania, but if they are related, that fact is lost to the history books. Chick did have a brother named Washington Fulmer, but that’s neither here nor there. Outfielder Chick Fullis (1928-36) played for some colorful teams in New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis. He won a World Series with the Gas House Gang in 1934. (With three Chicks on the bench and one in the rotation, the clubhouse is going to look like a henhouse.)

 Manager: Charlie Fox had a long association with the San Francisco Giants, managing that team from 1970-74. He won a division title and the Manager of the Year award in 1971. He eventually left San Francisco and had short stints with Montreal and Chicago.