On his 45th birthday, we look back at Matt Stairs' long, strange career

Matt Stairs had one of the more interesting baseball careers of the past couple of decades. The New Brunswick-born slugger packed a lot of power into his "5-foot-9 and 2-I-really-don't-care" frame and bounced around professional baseball for 21 years. He played for 12 MLB franchises (13 if you count the Expos and Nationals as separate), one Japanese team, and the Canadian national team in the 1988 Olympics and 2006 and '09 World Baseball Classics.

Stairs' best season came with Oakland in 1999. The then-31-year-old hit .258/.366/.533 with 38 home runs that year, but he'd never get more than 500 at bats in a season again. Instead, he became a pinch-hit specialist and played until age 43, eventually setting the MLB record for pinch-hit home runs with 23.

Stairs attained folk-hero status at some of his stops, including in Philadelphia where he won a World Series in 2008, but some statistical analysts argue Stairs' career could have amounted to much more. Bill James, in particular, has suggested that Stairs' talent may have led to Hall of Fame-worthy stats if he'd been given more chances in his early seasons.

While that would have been nice, Stairs still left his mark on the game. For his odyssey-like career, his pinch-hitting prowess and his grip-it-and-rip-it power stroke, he's a player who won't soon be forgotten.

-- Dan Wohl / MLB.com