5 former Pirates in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame

Matt Stairs

Stairs was the ultimate journeyman player, suiting up for a record 13 different teams in his nearly two decades in the majors. The Pirates were one of the many. Hailing from New Brunswick, Stairs was a member of the ‘88 Canadian Olympic team. Baseball was a demonstration sport in those Games, in which the US defeated Japan in the championship. Stairs went undrafted out of high school, but signed with the Expos as a free agent in ‘89. He made his major league debut with them a few years later, but wouldn’t stick around for an entire campaign until his age-29 season in 1997 with Oakland.  

His best years in the majors were spent with the A’s, and his finest individual season came the following year. Stairs hit .294 with 26 home runs and 106 RBI in 1998, valued at 3.4 bWAR. The 2003 Pittsburgh Pirates consisted of a lot of veterans like Stairs and Reggie Sanders that signed one-year deals, some of whom didn’t stick with the team the whole year and were dealt to other clubs accordingly, a group which included Kenny Lofton and Jeff Suppan. Brian Giles and Aramis Ramírez were also traded then, with Ramírez included in the Lofton swap with the Cubs that ended up being one of the worst trades in franchise history.  Stairs was not among them, appearing in 121 regular season contests as a first baseman, corner outfielder and pinch hitter, hitting .292 with 20 home runs. On the surface, that level of production looks quite good.

Stairs, then in his mid 30s, managed similar production that varied year to year with his subsequent teams. His 2007 season with the Blue Jays marked an improvement on all fronts. While he cooled down a bit in ‘08 with Toronto, this didn’t discourage the Phillies from taking a flyer on him as a veteran supplement for their playoff run. In Game 4 of the 2008 NLCS at Dodger Stadium, Stairs came off the bench in the top of the eighth and hit one of the more memorable home runs in Phillies history, a two-run shot off Jonathan Broxton that gave Philadelphia the lead and eventual win.  

Had the Phillies not made that trade, like so many others, baseball history would have changed. They might not have even won the NLCS, let alone the World Series that year. These hypotheticals are always interesting to speculate on, especially when they involve outliers like Matt Stairs. There haven’t been many players like him, who stuck around as long as he did and went under the radar, but always provided value to whatever team he was a part of.

His long career ended where it started, sort of. Stairs was 43 years old when he played his last game for the Washington Nationals, the same franchise that first took a chance on him all those years ago, a fitting end point to such a unique baseball journey. He was a member of the 2015 Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame class. 

Others

In addition to those mentioned already, there are several others with ties to the Pirates that are members of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. The most obvious of these would be José Bautista. Like Bay, “Joey Bats” hopped around the league before landing in Pittsburgh, though he never clicked here and later became a star in Toronto. In several MVP-caliber seasons with the Blue Jays, Bautista was beloved, and deservedly so. He’s up there among the greatest in their franchise’s history, and certainly one of their finest sluggers. Bautista will go into the Canadian Hall alongside Bédard this June. 

Another Toronto legend, Cito Gaston, manager of the back-to-back Blue Jays World Series teams, was a former big leaguer that played in only two games for the Pirates in 1978. Other inductees include Frank Colman, a first baseman and outfielder for the Pirates in the ‘40s, George Gibson, a longtime Pirates catcher and member of the 1909 World Series team, and Rocky Nelson, a first baseman and member of the 1960 championship club, who spent time with the Montreal Royals and Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League.

Enshrinees Murray Cook and Doug Melvin were both amateur players in the Pirates’ farm system before making their way through the front office ranks and becoming general managers themselves - Cook for the Yankees, Expos and Reds, Melvin for the Rangers and the Brewers.