Milwaukee took Prince seventh in the draft and, with Cecil serving as his agent, inked him to a $2.4 million signing bonus. That summer at Ogden, Utah, Prince roughed up pitchers in the rookie league -- he hit .390 with 10 home runs in just 41 games -- and by August was promoted to Class A Beloit (Wis.). He was walking off the field after a game there when a man emerged from the bleachers and confronted him. It was a process server who'd been trying to track down Cecil for months. In front of his team Prince was given papers that named his father as defendant in a lawsuit. The case had nothing to do with Prince, but still, says Gwynn, "he was embarrassed."

Just as Prince's baseball career was starting, his family was unraveling. Several other creditors, it turned out, were also after Cecil, who owed millions due to failed business ventures -- from classic cars to real estate -- and gambling losses. "We spent two to three years trying to track him down all across the country, at All-Star Games, through his son," says Robert Fleischacker, the attorney who sent the process server to Beloit on behalf of a trailer company that claimed Cecil owed $909,000 for defaulting on a lease agreement. He had guaranteed the leases for a Detroit-area trucking company. "We'd spent enough time and resources trying to find him," says Fleischacker. "It just wasn't worth it anymore, so we stopped." Another creditor is Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City, which successfully sued Cecil for more than $580,000 that, according to court papers, he lost during a gambling binge in 1999.

Cecil's financial woes came to light in 2004, during his divorce proceedings with Stacey. Each blamed the other for the family's financial ruin: Stacey pointed to Cecil's gambling; he cited her extravagant spending. Prince took Stacey's side, engaging in shouting matches with Cecil in the courtroom and over the phone. "Prince felt like he needed to protect his mother and become the man of the house, so we had some heated conversations," says Cecil. "Some bad things were said." Prince also accused his father of taking $200,000 of his signing bonus without permission. "My father is dead to me," he told The Detroit News in 2004.

Through it all Prince tried to stay focused on reaching the majors. "I was worried about him," says Gwynn. "He was a wreck. He could easily have gone the other way, but somehow he channeled all those emotions positively into baseball. You should have seen him in the weight room -- he was an animal." In August 2005 Prince was hitting .291 with 28 homers at Triple A Nashville when Milwaukee called him up. He has never looked back. "All that stuff that happened, it went away when I was on the field," says Prince. "Out there everything was easy. I just got to play baseball every day and not think about that other stuff. And it's kind of the same way now."

Of course the father has regrets. He wishes that he had handled the divorce differently, that he was smarter with some of his business deals. But he will not apologize for the gambling. "How many athletes do you know who go to Las Vegas?" he asks. "It was never a problem. Never." And he will not apologize for taking a cut of his son's signing bonus. "Any other agent would have gotten five percent, and it wouldn't have been a big deal," he says. "So what's the problem?"