By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/03/rusty-staub-rip-orange-head-golden-heart.html
Staub (10) pranked with orange wigs by teammates Darryl
Strawberry (left rear), Keith Hernandez (left), Sid Fernandez
(right), and others on Rusty Staub Day in 1985, his
final season.Ian Happ, Chicago Cubs leadoff hitter, owner of five leadoff bombs among the seven he hit in spring training, opened the regular season with a bang by
hitting one over the right field fence in Miami off Jose Urena. It opened a three-run first to which Urena contributed the hard way, hitting three Cubs, as
Marlins owner Derek Jeter sank in his seat.
Somehow, the Marlins got back into the game to make it 5-4, before Anthony Rizzo ripped a two-out bomb into those same seats to make it 6-4, Cubs
in the sixth; the Cubs made it 8-4 after seven as this was published.
But in New York the season opened with a whimper, despite the Mets dropping a five-run fifth on Carlos Martinez and two bullpen bulls to make things
8-3, Mets going to the sixth (it became 8-4 as this was published), on a day Noah Syndergaard became the second met to strike out 10 or more in the
first five Opening Day innings.
Mets franchise icon Rusty Staub died in a West Palm Beach hospital at 73 Opening Day morning. The only player to have 500+ hits with four major league
teams (the Astros, the Expos, the Mets, and the Tigers), Staub was renowned as much for his charity as for his ability to drive baseballs and run them
down in the outfield, and he was one of the most beloved men ever to wear a Mets uniform.
It was Staub who created the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Childrens' Fund after he retired as a player in 1985. The fund has raised tens of millions
since for the families of first responders who have died on duty. When the Mets played their first game following the 9/11 atrocity, Mets players, coaches,
and then-manager Bobby Valentine donated their day's pay to the fund.
A New Orleans kid who debuted with the then-Houston Colt .45s at 19, Staub was a six-time All Star, a student of the game, a solid if inconsistent hitter
who earned his first All-Star gig in the year he led the National League in doubles.
Picked by the expansion Montreal Expos he became their first bona-fide star. Dealt to the Mets for Tim Foli, Mike Jorgensen, and Ken Singleton, Staub made
three of his All-Star teams in Expos silks and hit a career-high thirty home runs with them in 1970. As a Met, he finally got a stab at championship play.
A year after joining them, Staub helped them to their out-of-nowhere National League East title in 1973 and was a wrecking machine in the League Champion-
ship Series, hitting three bombs in the first four of that testy set to send the Big Red Machine home for the winter.
In Game Four's eleventh inning, Staub and his shoulder were separated while he made a spectacular outfield catch. It cost him Tom Seaver's Game Five pennant
winner and Game One of the World Series. Perhaps stubbornly, Staub returned to action in Game Two. He still managed to hit one out, drive in six, and hit .426
as the Mets lost in seven games to the Oakland Mustache Gang.
That performance endeared him to Mets fans forever. Two years later, Staub became the first Met to drive in 100+ runs in a season, his 105 standing as a club
record until Darryl Strawberry broke it with 108 in 1990.
Staub was an engaging clubhouse presence who lightened loads for numerous teammates. He was one of the only Mets able to loosen up tightly-wound slugger
Dave Kingman, whose early experiences with the Giants seared him into moodiness. He later did his best to keep such talented but troubled Mets as Strawberry
from letting life and baseball's often contradictory inside cultures distract, divert, or destroy them. He could do only so much.
The Mets traded him to the Tigers after 1975 season for veteran lefthanded pitcher Mickey Lolich. Lolich pitched respectably in 1976 as the Mets continued the
skid that would sink them until the early-to-mid 1980s but lost 1977 to injuries. Staub in Detroit made his final All-Star team and became the first American
League player to play all 162 games in a season as his team's designated hitter.
After one more quick tour in Montreal and a stop in Arlington, the Mets brought him back in 1981, possibly as much to be a mentor to the younger players
beginning to seep onto the team and return it to excellence as for his bat, which age had now reduced to pinch hitting. Staub became one of the game's premier
pinch swingers and even tied a Show record with 25 pinch runs batted in 1983, the season in which he also tied a National League record with eight straight
pinch hits.
"I’ve never met anyone like him," said Ron Darling, who came to the Mets during Staub's second tour and helped pitch them to the 1986 World Series title a
year after Staub's final season. "I think that that’s unusual. Where everyone ends up being just about like everyone else, he was not that guy. He was a
Renaissance kind of man. Ballplayers tend to like to fish and hunt, whatever they do. There are a few guys that do everything. And Rusty was good at
everything."
Staub later ran a popular New York restaurant, became a Mets broadcaster for a decade following his retirement, and was as known for his erudition as for
the voluminous book he kept on every pitcher he'd ever faced---going as far back as early 1960s Cincinnati ace Joey Jay and Pittsburgh stalwart Bob Friend.
"He let me look through it,†says Keith Hernandez, his Mets teammate from 1983-85, who also proved a key on that 1986 World Series winner. "It went
back from the ’60s and the ’70s into the present. I said, ‘Let me have this book.’ He goes, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You didn’t earn it'."
After Staub retired, he gave Hernandez the book. Long a Mets broadcaster, Hernandez still has the book. New York has plenty by which to remember Staub,
none more ennobling than the charitable group that helps those whose family members die on duty as first responders at such as 9/11.
That means just a little more than any clutch hit or clutch play, and Staub made plenty of those, too.
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