Matt Stairs the slugger

[DeezNutz]

Originally Posted by Demonpenz

I began to write about Matt Stairs four years after that, after he had started the "Have bat, will homer," phase of his career. He was 36 by then, and the Kansas City Royals were his seventh team, and the Kansas City Royals were all kinds of lousy*. Those teams had a knack for not only losing, but losing with style.

*I'm never sure if the quintessential moment happened:

1. In Chicago, when center fielder Kerry Robinson raced back and climbed the fence in an effort to steal a home run only to watch the ball bounce 10 feet in front of him on the warning track and bounce over his head.

2. In Kansas City, when outfielders Terrence Long and Chip Ambres converged on a fly ball, looked at each other and began jogging toward the dugout in triumph only to have the ball plop softly behind them.

3. At home, when the Royals were caught batting out of order. That's bad enough. But in this case, it was the Royals' LEADOFF HITTER who batted out of order. That's a record.

Matt Stairs was on the field for all three of those games, and plenty of other astonishing ones. When Royals manager Tony Pena jumped in the shower with his clothes on in order to jumpstart the team**, Stairs suggested to his teammates that they go home and get drunk. Everyone has his own method for dealing with madness.

Fun times...