Remembering Steve Pearce's Brief Stint With Yankees in Honor of Retirement

Winning Most Valuable Player of a World Series is a momentous accomplishment. Steve Pearce's powerful performance in the 2018 Fall Classic, with the Boston Red Sox, will forever be the crowning achievement of his 13-year career.

Perhaps more impressively, however, Pearce played for all five teams in the American League East across his tenure in the big leagues. Now that is something to remember. 

Pearce announced his retirement from MLB on Tuesday, telling WEEI he had made an official decision after speculation of calling it quits last fall. 

The 36-year-old may be hanging up his spikes, but he has quite a bit to be proud of looking back at his big-league career. Pearce wore seven uniforms, hitting .254 with a total of 91 homers and driving in 303 runs across 766 Major League games.

Again, one of his claims to fame – beyond his three-homer, eight-RBI performance in the 2018 World Series – was his unique ability to play for all five AL East teams. In decreasing order of time spent with each club, the corner infielder and outfielder played for Baltimore, Toronto, Boston, Tampa and New York.

That's right, Pearce did at one point don pinstripes. You might not remember as he was a member of the Yankees for a whopping 12 games.

After half a decade with the Pirates, Pearce started the 2012 season with New York. He spent the first two months of the season in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre where he was one of the best hitters across Triple-A. Pearce lead the league in hits (61) and batting average (.318) while stroking 11 homers. 

That's when New York sent him to Baltimore in a trade early June. Pearce spent 28 games with the Orioles before he was shipped to Houston. Then finally, after less than a month, the Yankees acquired Pearce back, sending the Astros cash considerations.

Pearce hit .160 with New York from August 28 through the end of the regular season, collecting just four base hits and one home run. His lone big fly was a two-run shot against the Orioles with southpaw Wei-Yin Chen on the mound (4:20 into the video below).

As it turns out, not every right-handed slugger can end up in New York for a very brief stint and go on to retire this week. Mark Reynolds also hung up the spikes within the last few days. He played on the Bombers one year after Pearce (for 36 games) and mashed a homer in his first at-bat with the club. 

READ: Remembering Mark Reynolds' brief stint with the Yankees in 2013

Since you're dying to see what Pearce looked like in pinstripes, here's an invigorating highlight of Pearce drawing a walk and then scoring on a Curtis Granderson sacrifice fly:

Since he barely played for the Bombers, but spent so much time in New York's division, we have a sizable sample size of his numbers against the Yankees. In 67 games up against New York, Pearce had 56 hits – including 15 home runs – while driving in 36. All of those numbers are the most he had against any team in his career. 

Much of that success occurred when he was in a Red Sox uniform. Remember Pearce's emphatic three home run game at Fenway Park against the visiting Bombers in 2018?

If you're curious, another player who very briefly joined the Yankees and ended up a member of the other four teams in the division as well, look no further than Kelly Johnson. Johnson – a lefty-swinging utilityman was a Yankee for 77 games in 2014. 

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