This Is The Pro Athlete Who Played For The Most Teams

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 27, 1:00PM EST

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This Is The Pro Athlete Who Played For The Most Teams — © Gregory Shamus / Getty Images Sport via Getty Images

There are 32 teams in the NFL, 30 in MLB, 30 NBA teams, and 32 in the NHL. Some players spend their entire careers with one. Baseball Hall of Famer is a good example. Al Kaline played his entire 22 seasons with the Detroit Tigers. However, some players are traded from team to team, and others who are dropped from one, sometimes end up with another.

One category of players who move often is journeymen. Journeymen athletes are good enough to stay in their league for many years, but not quite good enough to feature in any franchise’s long-term plans. Throughout sports history, there have been a handful of journeymen who bounced from team to team, never settling in one place. In fact, there are 10 players who suited up for a dozen or more teams in their careers.

To determine the player who played for the most teams, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data from the Sports Reference family of sites on professional athletes who played for at least 12 NFL, MLB, NHL, or NBA franchises. Only players who made the active roster for a franchise were considered.

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Of the 10 different players who have played for at least a dozen teams in their careers, five were in the MLB, four in the NBA, and just one in the NHL. No NFL player has ever suited up for a dozen teams.

Though being a journeyman player is not the most glamorous pro sports occupation, it is still impressive. The record holder played for 14 different MLB teams, meaning nearly half the teams thought he was good enough to be on their roster. This required consistency, longevity, professionalism, and adaptability, moving from Baltimore to San Diego to nearly a dozen other major cities over the course of 17 years. This long, winding career may never be equaled.

The player who played for the most teams was Edwin Jackson. Here are the details:

> Teams played for: 14
> League: MLB
> Career length: 2003-2019

No professional athlete in the modern history of the NFL, NHL, NBA, or MLB played for as many teams as Edwin Jackson, at 14. The pitcher made his MLB debut for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2003 at just 19 years old. In 2006, he was traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, where he also spent three seasons. Jackson was traded to the Detroit Tigers ahead of the 2009 season. There, he made his lone All-Star game, going 13-9 with a 3.62 ERA.

After the season, he was traded four times in 20 months, going from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Chicago White Sox to the Toronto Blue Jays to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he was part of their 2011 World Series-winning team. Beginning in 2012, Jackson signed a string of free agent deals, playing for the Washington Nationals, Chicago Cubs, Atlanta Braves, Miami Marlins, San Diego Padres, Baltimore Orioles, Washington again, the Oakland A’s, a second stint in Toronto, and finally back to Detroit for a few games in 2019 to round out his career.

Click here to read Professional Athletes Who Have Played for the Most Teams

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.