During the Phils’ Interleague romp in Toronto this June 25-27, there’s another party coming to the 416. The G20 summit is scheduled at a building next to the Rogers Centre June 26-27, which means a shitload of rich, foreign important dudes and world leaders could be surrounded by thousands of drunken Canadians.

For those that don’t know, (including myself), generally the following attend the G20 Summit, made up of about…20? or so countries all around the world, including Canada and the US. From the NYT’s Exonomix blog:

Usually, the attendees of the annual meetings are the finance ministers and central bank governors of the member countries, plus top leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This is the first time that heads of governments will attend a G-20 meeting.

Now, that ‘first time’ is in regards to its first summit, this weekend, in Korea. I assume it goes the same for the June meetings.

KJ Mullins’s Digital Journal article about G20 interfering with Toronto Gay Pride week activities has the slightly more detailed deets:

Pride officials aren’t the only ones to face problems with scheduling. The Toronto Blue Jays were to host the Philadelphia Phillies on those two days. The location of the Rogers Centre and the planned venue of the summit are next door to each other. In order to protect world leaders the games have to be rescheduled.

No word on any dates the games could be rescheduled to.

The one thing we do know, however, is that Matt Stairs will not be attending.

According to Jerry Crasnick on the tweets, “Matt Stairs is signing with the San Diego Padres. Hoping to be their LH bat off the bench. Stairs has a minor league deal with a major league invite, but it appears he has a very good chance to make Pads roster.”

Good luck, Matt.

Around 150 people showed up in Fredericton, New Brunswick in Canada yesterday to proclaim Saturday, November 28th, “Matt Stairs Day”. The ceremony also featured the unveiling of a street sign that reads “Matt Stairs Way” (or “Matt Stairs Voie” if you speak Canadian) which will be prominently displayed on a street that intersects Royals Field in Fredericton — the place he began his professional baseball career.

From the sound of it, Royals Field is pretty special to Matt (via CBC News):

“Royals Field…that’s one of the most special ones I’ve ever been in [Ed Note: told you],” said Stairs, one of Canada’s most successful power hitters, with a 16-season career in the major leagues and 259 home runs.

“One, it’s in my hometown. Two, it’s where I was scouted, where I was signed.

“It’s a home inside of a home city. And now, just to have a street named around it is a great honour [sic],” said Stairs.”

The humble Stairs also admits that all of these love fests probably wouldn’t be going on if he never won a World Series with the Phillies in 2008 (via The Daily Gleaner):

“The signs that go on Royals Field … the street signs … you work your whole career to win a World Series. You win a World Series and all of a sudden this happens to you.

“The World Series is second, that’s for sure. To have my name … a street that’s named after me … it’s probably the best honour [sic] that’s ever happened to me.

“I’m a Frederictonian. I absolutely love this city.”

I’m sure Matt doesn’t actually enjoy Frederickstown or whatever the hell the name of that city is more than Philly, but I understand that you gotta butter those folks up when you’re there in-person.  I’m also sure that upwards of 100 people out of the 150 that showed up made some kind of corny joke about taking Matt Stairs Way to heaven.  And really, how could you love people like that?

City unveils street sign for Matt Stairs Way | The Daily Gleaner
Fredericton honours [sic] hometown sports hero | CBC News
Special step for Stairs | Philly.com

Check out the pitch locations of Matt Stairs’ at-bat last night in the eighth inning. He only swung at one of those pitches, a 2-2 pitch, yet pitches that were essentially in the same location were called strikes or balls depending on what the umpire felt like. No wonder Stairs ended up striking out on a pitch out of the zone; what was he going to do, let it go and hope the ump decided that, nah, this time this same pitch will be a ball? (The TBS announcers, naturally, made no mention of the ridiculousness of this strike zone on this at-bat.) The umps were apparently just as tired as we all were watching the game last night, as the strike zone was all over the place.

How does a player (on either team) approach an at-bat when the strike zone is so unpredictable? Sure, players get information on the tendencies of each umpire and know (generally) what each ump’s strike zone is like, but last night was just silly. It’s not that the Phillies got screwed or anything — they won, and even ended up catching a break next inning, of course, when Chase Utley fouled a ball off his leg and somehow ended up beating it out for a single — but the badness of the umpiring throughout the series has really detracted from the enjoyment of the game. Plenty of people have written plenty of columns about the bad umpiring in this year’s playoffs so far. The question is: Is Major League Baseball going to do anything about it?

Each day(-ish) during the postseason, Dan McQuade will write about the Phillies’ chance at a second straight World Series title. You can usually read his thoughts on baseball at Walkoff Walk. He actually called for replay and a computerized strike zone back in July. So ahead of the trends!

It’s the burning question that absolutely nobody is asking right now, but I guess Stairs brought it up so let’s give the man a chance to speak. Hipster/beatwriter Andy Martino supplies the quotes:

“I’ll play one more year and I’m done,” the 17-year veteran, who will turn 42 in February, told The Inquirer. Stairs can be a free agent after this season. “I’d like to be back, but that’s a decision for the team. I’m inexpensive, and I don’t complain that I don’t play a lot.”

“I love pinch-hitting,” said Stairs, who has accumulated more than 300 major-league at-bats in every season but one since 1996. This season, he has 83. “But [with limited playing time], it’s tough.”

Sounds good to me, Matty, we’d be glad to have ya!

The real problem with Stairs here, as addressed by both Martino and Charlie Manuel in the article, is ol’ Moonshot’s lack of at-bats. And because he no longer plays in a league where they honor that dumb-as-shit DH rule, it’s hard for Stairs to find a place for a spot start.

Either way, I think it’s always comforting knowing you have a guy on the bench who, at any given moment, is capable of stepping to the plate and hitting a BOMB into the right field seats. For how inexpensive he is ($3.25 million in 2009), you might as well keep him around.

Stairs wants to return to Phillies in 2010 | Inquirer

Sit down fatty, Matt Stairs is up!

On this week’s edition of Phillies Clubhouse, CSN reporter Greg Murphy sat down for a little one-on-one time with professional hitter and purveyor of moon shots, Matt Stairs. While most of the interview centered around the awesomeness that is Matt Stairs and how it feels to be so awesome, Greg did manage to bring up a certain t-shirt that a certain web site has been selling and asked Matt what he thought about it.

The clip:

Nice! I can’t tell you how honored we are here at The Fightins/Birdland to have the man himself recognize our attempt at saluting his nightly efforts. And you can guarantee that a fresh case of ‘Moon Shot’ tees will soon be delivered to the Phillies clubhouse ASAP. He was just being modest there — he definitely wants one.

I imagine by the time the night is over, 90% of all major league ballplayers, managers, former ballplayers, sportswriters, broadcasters, bloggers, assholes, shitdicks, and Jay Leno will have opined on the Manny Ramirez suspension.

Well, no matter whose opinion you hear, none will be better than that of professional hitter Matt Stairs.

Via Todd Zolecki:

“People are going to have to stop taking this health bullshit and go back to being chubby and having fun.”

Amen, Matt.

Lookey what I noticed when Shane Victorino stepped to the plate in the 3rd inning after extending his hitting streak to 14 games with a homer in the 1st — HE’S USING MATT STAIRS’ BAT:

The Phillies and Cardinals are currently in the bottom of the 5th with the Fightins’ leading 7-3, and Shane has a homer, double, and single already.  Does he have a shot at a triple, thus completing his cycle?

Oh, no questions asked.

UPDATE: After I mentioned in the comments that I was hoping to zoom in on the knob of the bat and it would say ‘Fuck Face’, Tug Haines of Long Drive put his photoshop skills to work and came up with this:

Following his big boy blast in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Dodgers, Matt Stairs has become somewhat of a folk hero in the Philadelphia area. Normally, when a player thwacks a career-defining home run like that, he might stay around the area for a little while and bask in his newfound celebrity.

But that ain’t how Matt Stairs rolls.

The journeyman “professional hitter” is back in Bangor, Maine — his offseason resting place — to resume hockey coaching duties for Bangor’s John Bapst Memorial High School. Being that there couldn’t possibly be more important news in Bangor than the mere presence of Matt Stairs, the town’s Daily News caught up with the Asst. Coach to talk some Phillies. He called Philadelphia “very supportive” and the Phillies “very professional.” Here are some other words he put together in sentence-form so that the author of the story could write a coherent article:

On the World Series victory:

“It was a blast. All those morning practices, staying late and doing all that extra hitting paid off after 20 years. To finally get a ring, it’s a great honor.”

On the Phillies:

“They go about their business the right way. There’s no horseplay once the game starts. I’ve never seen guys get to the ballpark so early to prepare for games.”

On the Philly fans:

“They were hungry for a championship. I came at a good time. We won something like 25 of our last 31 games, whatever it was, when you went to the ballpark, there was electricity. They were waving those white towels.

If you don’t play well, they’ll be tough on you. It’s one of those things. But we played well at the right time, we never lost a game at home in the playoffs. Even if you’re tired, when you get in that batter’s box, you felt a surge of energy.”

On coaching hockey:

“Coaching is fun, you get back the first couple of days, everyone asks you questions about how it was, what’s going on and what’s this guy like.

But the good thing about it is when I get here, everyone treats me just like a regular coach. The biggest thing is I’ve been around so long and I’ve played the game for so long, what I try to teach the kids as a positive role model is if you have a dream, anything is possible.”

On the feeling after hitting that Game 4 homer:

“When you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout and you’re getting your ass hammered by guys — there’s no better feeling than to have that done.”

Oh nevermind. That was from a month-and-a-half ago.

World title changes Stairs’ life | Bangor Daily News
Photo credit: John Clarke Russ/Bangor Daily News

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