Sad news to report: Rusty Staub, who starred for the Astros, Expos, Mets, Tigers and Rangers over a 23-year playing career, has died at the age of 73.
Staub had suffered from numerous health issues in recent years. In 2015 he suffered a near-fatal heart attack while on a transatlantic flight. He survived that ordeal but fell ill over the winter and, eventually, was struck with a blood infection and subsequent kidney failure. He died just after midnight last night at the Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida due to multiple organ failure.
Staub came up with what was then known as the Houston Colt .45s, later the Astros, in 1963, at the age of 19. He’d only play one full season -- at the age of 18 -- and one partial season in the minors. The reason was obvious: Staub could hit. By the age of 21, in his third big league season, he was already getting on base at a healthy clip and, over the next few years, his keen eye and gap power allowed him to develop into one of the better bats in the extraordinarily tough National League of the 1960s. While never a below average hitter after 1965, his true coming out party occurred in 1967 when he hit .333/.398/.473 with 44 doubles for the 1967 Astros. A man of extraordinarily high baseball intelligence, he was among the first Astros players to truly appreciate and take advantage of the cavernous confines of the Astrodome, and adjusted his approach to hit to the gaps as opposed to swinging for the fences, despite his considerable power. He was an All-Star in right field that year, the first of his six selections to the Midsummer Classic.
Staub, never a favorite to Astros ownership due to his tough contract negotiating stances, including a holdout at the beginning of the 1968 season, was traded to the expansion Montreal Expos before the 1969 campaign. While he had already become a star in Houston, it was in Montreal that he truly began to forge his baseball legacy. Nicknamed Le Grand Orange for his stature and his blaze orange hair, Staub was the Expos’ first star, hitting an outstanding .302/.426/.526 with 29 homers in the club’s first year of existence. The Expos lost 110 games that year -- and Staub would only play in Montreal for three seasons, returning for one partial season a decade later -- but he forged his status as a Montreal Expos legend which lasts to this day.
Staub was traded again on the eve of the 1972 season, heading to the New York Mets in exchange for or Tim Foli, Mike Jorgensen and Ken Singleton. It was a transaction that made a mark on both clubs, giving the Expos a core of players which would improve their prospects in the coming years and giving the Mets a larger than life star and offensive weapon in some of the franchise’s better seasons. He was a key part of the 1973 pennant winning team and, during his second stint with the Mets between 1981 and 1985 he helped bridge the gap during a sometimes painful rebuild. In both stints he was a fan favorite. Overall he hit .276/.358/.419 in nine seasons as a Met.
For a player who was known primarily for his bat, it’s somewhat surprising that he wasn’t acquired to be someone’s full-time DH earlier than he was, but the Detroit Tigers tapped him for those purposes, acquiring him in exchange for Tigers legend Mickey Lolich after the 1975 season. Staub would man right for the most part in 1976 but spent the entire 1977 and 1978 season as the Tigers’ designated hitter, putting up his reliably above average numbers in that role. Staub would DH and play corner positions in 1980 with the Rangers and would bop between first, right and left for the Expos and Mets for the remainder of his career, retiring after the 1985 campaign.
Staub’s career line: .279/.362/.431 with 292 homers, 1,466 RBI and an OPS+ of 124 over 23 years. He remains 13th all-time in games played, 35th all-time in career plate appearances, 44th all-time in times getting on base and 52nd all-time in career walks. He was on the Hall of Fame ballot for seven years, though he never got as much as 8% of the vote. Was he a Hall of Famer, objectively speaking? Probably not, but he certainly deserved more love from the BBWAA voters than he received.
Off-the-field Staub was a beloved figure. A foodie, a wine connoisseur and a New York restaurant owner, the stories of Staub holding court with fans, the media and baseball figures, usually over glasses of wine, are legion. His humanitarian record is even more impressive. From Bill Madden of the New York Daily News:
There were better hitters than Rusty Staub, but far fewer than you might think. There may have been more beloved baseball figures than Staub, but that number is even smaller.
Good travels, Le Grand Orange. You’ll be greatly missed.