On this date 18 years ago, Matt Stairs ripped one into the night

Matt Stairs is emblematic of a now extinct baseball archetype. With the adoption of the universal designated hitter, pinch hitters aren’t as valued as they once were. Baseball has said goodbye to the likes of Daniel Vogelbach, and Rowdy Tellez barely clings to MLB rosters these days.

If baseball’s big men no longer need to play the field to be in the starting lineup, the heyday of the late-game slugger coming off the bench is over. But on one clear night in Chavez Ravine, 18 years ago, Stairs showed every Philadelphia Phillies fan the glory of those times.

The Phillies had a 2-1 lead in the 2008 NLCS going into Game 4, after winning both home games, then falling to the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-2 the previous night. On October 13, Philadelphia sent Joe Blanton to the mound, opposed by Los Angeles’ Derek Lowe, pitching in his 21st postseason game. It would be Blanton’s second-ever playoff start.

Chase Utley and Ryan Howard got to Lowe early. In the first inning, they doubled and grounded out to drive in two runs before Blanton surrendered a run of his own in the first to Dodgers’ first baseman James Loney.

The pitchers settled in, and for seven consecutive frames, no runs were scored by either team. Then in the fifth, the Dodgers tied the game on an RBI single from Manny Ramirez and a groundout from Russell Martin.

Little did the Phillies know—or care, for that matter—that they would face a far stiffer test in the top of the sixth with Lowe pulled from the game. Rookie Clayton Kershaw came in to face the middle of the Philadelphia order and looked all of his 20 years old. He walked Howard and gave up a single to Pat Burrell before Shane Victorino bunted the runners over to second and third. Kershaw was pulled.

Chan Ho Park came in and limited the damage to one run on a wild pitch, but the Dodgers struck back for the lead. In their half of the sixth, Chad Durbin and Scott Eyre melted down for two runs on a homer, a double, and two walks. Ryan Madson came in to mop up the mess and was lucky to get an unassisted line-drive double play by Utley to end the inning with one out, the bases loaded, and the score 5-3.

The game went to the top of the eighth with the Phillies still trailing by two. Howard led off the inning with a single before Victorino came to the plate following Burrell’s infield pop-up. The previous night, when the Phillies were even deeper in the hole at 6-1 in the third, Victorino had been at the center of a bench-clearing incident when Hiroki Kuroda had thrown a pitch behind his head.

“Throw at my ribs, not at my head,” he yelled toward the Dodgers pitcher before catcher Russell Martin restrained the Phillies center fielder. After he grounded out, the jawing continued and the benches emptied. No punches were thrown, but Ramirez had to be held back as he tried to race toward the crowd of Phillies gathering on the infield grass.

So when Victorino hooked a curveball from Cory Wade into the Philadelphia bullpen in the right-field corner, boos from over 56,000 Dodgers faithful rained down on the Phillies' center fielder like a thunderstorm.

But it was not to Victorino upon which the full force of their ire would soon fall. 

The biggest pinch hit home run in Phillies history

After a single from Carlos Ruiz, the bullpen doors opened and into the game strolled shutdown reliever Jonathan Broxton, with Stairs coming to the plate for Madson, power against power.

The first pitch sailed past the Phillies slugger for a strike. Then came ball one, followed by balls two and three. Stairs hadn’t taken the bat off his shoulder. Broxton’s next pitch was a 94mph get-me-over middle-middle fastball. Stairs later said he was trying to hit it out of the ballpark.

The ball exploded off his bat and sailed more than 20 rows deep into right field at Dodger Stadium. Stairs didn’t celebrate as he circled the bases. He put his head down and let the crowd do the talking. It was silent.

Later that night, during the postgame press conference after the Phillies’ comeback victory was complete, Stairs called that swing the top pinch-hit home run he had ever hit.

“I think that’s one of those things where you’ve been here for a month, and you want to get that one big hit where you feel like you’re really part of the team. And not that I don’t feel like I’m part of the team, by no means, but when you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout, and you’re getting your ass hammered by guys, there's no better feeling,” he said.

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