Matt Stairs is hardly what any of us would call a physical specimen, unless we happened to be Jared before he took the first trip to the Subway beneath his apartment. That’s a true story. He lived above Subway. Make it a Burger King and he’d have been craned out on an episode of Maury.
Despite his unmesomorphic figure, the 5-foot-9, 200-pound (That’s what he’s listed at. Do they think we don’t have eyes?) Stairs can’t stop getting clutch hits. Not even at the age of 43. On Friday night, Stairs got what seemed like the 2,000th clutch hit of his career when his pinch-hit single in the bottom of the ninth led the Nationals to a 2-1 win over the Pirates in a shocking matchup of two decent teams. The fact that he is still going strong underneath such an unlikely frame leads me to the only conclusion possible: Matt Stairs is a baseball robot built by Canadians.
Somehow, some way, Stairs always manages to keep his career relevant. Though the A’s are the only team he’s ever played on for more than two years in a row — from 1996-2000 — people can never get themselves enough Matt Stairs. He’s come full circle, even rejoining the franchise he started his career with way back in 19 hundred and 92, when it was known as the Montreal Expos. For a good time, check out his uniform numbers on baseball-reference.com. There are so many that they barely even fit on the page!
Without question, Matt Stairs is one of my favorite ballplayers of all time — mostly because you can’t picture him being anything but a ballplayer.
Unless you picture him as a robot.
