After being released by the Nationals on Monday, the great Matt Stairs decided to call it a career. He wasn’t the most productive major league player, but from his debut 19 years ago up until his final swing, he came to represent much of what I loved about baseball.
Baseball is a game that can be played by anyone and Matt Stairs embodied that perhaps better than anyone. Standing at,maybe, 5′ 9″, he certainly wasn’t the tall, lean athletic type. In fact, Stairs looked more like a beer league softball player or a truck driver or your uncle Harry who works the late shift at the local factory, but man could he crush a baseball. Blue collar. Grip-it-and-rip-it.
There was nothing fancy about Stairs’s game. He waited to get a pitch that he liked and when he got one, he took a mighty rip at it. Stairs was a selective hitter (12 percent career walk rate), yet he never ended a season with a large strikeout total. For his career he averaged one home run every 19.6 at-bats, which would translate to about 28 home runs over a 550 at-bat span. Stairs’s career high in homers came in 1999, when he crushed 38 of them in 531 at-bats. That season he played in 146 games, had a career-high 623 plate appearances and posted a .258/.366/.533 slash line with a .378 wOBA. For his career, Stairs hit 265 home runs, yet only struck out in 18.6 percent of his plate appearances.
In the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Stairs became a cult hero to much of the baseball world. He didn’t look like the flashy superstars of that era, but rather a regular guy, the type who only dreamed of making it to the big leagues. It almost seemed like he was playing the game on their behalf. But he could flat out hit and the way he loaded up his swing then uncoiled with full-force upon the baseball was a pure joy to watch.
Baseball was a game that Stairs just didn’t seem to ever want to leave. He played for 13 different teams, but was only traded three times over his career. At age 43, still with a big grin on his face, Stairs finally called it a career, but anyone who saw him play in his prime and even later on as he bounced around from team-to-team, constantly sending souvenirs into the outfield stands, will never forget the joy he brought to baseball.
Thank you Matt Stairs. See you on the softball field (or hockey rink, eh?).
