Matt Stairs
Matt Stairs is a rotund pinch-hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies. He was exclusively credited for the 2008 NLCS championship garnered by the Phillies, despite batting only once in all three games.
Early Life[edit | edit source]
Matt Stairs was born in 1921 to a group of eskimos in Nunavut Territory, Canada. As a child, his primary hobby was bashing seals to death using a wooden club. However, at the age of 15, he got tired of being a stereotypical Canadian and planned a bold scheme to get into the U.S. After walking several hundred miles, he arrived at the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. There, he purchased a barrel of stout from a local brewery. After drinking all of the beer and squeezing himself into the now empty barrel, he started to roll through a parking lot near the falls. Chased by a pair of overweight mounties, he finally fell into the falls. However, failure to research currents kept Stairs in Canada, as the barrel turned and flowed to the north, toward Quebec. He finally escaped the barrel when it rammed into a boat full of drunk French-Canadians and broke near Montreal.
Baseball Career[edit | edit source]
Stairs, searching for a job, signed on as a Montreal Expos mascot. As "Pierre the Fur Trapper and Impregnator", Stairs amused the Expos fans who dared show up to games more than the team on the field. For that reason, Stairs began his career in the MLB. The long years of seal bashing made Stairs a good power hitter, but an awful fielder. Soon, his dream of escape to America was answered when the Expos traded him to Boston. He spent about a quarter of a season there, before being traded again, across the continent to Oakland. His time in Oakland was his best. Despite being white, dumpy, and Canadian, he was never shanked, probably because he was a fairly good player.
Cubs Debacle[edit | edit source]
Sadly, Oakland decided to trade him four years later. Stairs went to the Chicago Cubs, where he played one game, in which he got lost in the ivy. Cubs management did not in fact notice that they were missing Stairs until they received a call from the Chicago Mafia, who congratulated general manager Andy MacPhail on a great "bumping-off", and offered him a job as a hitman. MacPhail, who was getting tired of the whole general manager package, promptly accepted, leaving Jim Hendry to take over.
It wasn't until the winter that Stairs was rediscovered, as the ivy had finally died off. Hendry promptly traded him to Milwaukee. There, Stairs gained over a hundred pounds before heading to Pittsburgh, from where he went to Kansas City for two years. Since the Pirates suck so much and nobody wants to play there, he gained another 200 pounds from eating ice cream and watching soap operas. Yeah, the Pirates suck badly. Haven't had a winning season since 1992.
The Great Three-Way Steak-Seasoning Deal[edit | edit source]
Kansas City retained Stairs for two years before they Toronto offered an interesting trade. It appeared that they needed an outfielder for about a month while another guy recovered. They promised to return Stairs when they were done with him. But instead of offering an exchange player, Toronto G.M. J.P. Ricciardi called up a friend in the Montreal Expos office and offered an exchange of French-Canadian pitcher Eric Gagne for the naming rights to Montreal Steak Seasoning. Once that trade was successfully pulled off, Ricciardi offered Kansas City the steak seasoning rights for Stairs. Kansas City accepted, and renamed Montreal Steak Seasoning to K.C. Steak Seasoning. Stairs played his one month in Toronto before returning to Kansas City.
Later Career[edit | edit source]
Stairs played one more season in Kansas City before bouncing around the American League. In 2006, he played for Kansas City, Detroit, Texas, and Toronto. The next two seasons for Stairs were spent in Toronto, until 2008, when he was traded mid-season to Philadelphia. He was credited with all of their playoff success in 2008 and 2009.