The next player in my on-going 1970 “In-Game Action” set to get a card is “Le Grand Orange”, Rusty Staub, an overlooked player who in my opinion deserves a bit more Hall of Fame love than he normally gets:
Staub was in the middle of his three-year run North of the border playing for the Montreal Expos, for whom he put in three successive All-Star seasons over the organization’s first three years as a Major League ball club.
He
started out as a 19 year old kid in Houston in 1963 and went on to play
for Montreal, Detroit, Texas and the New York Mets for two stints, with
whom he retired with after the 1985 season.
And for those last five seasons with the Mets, he became one of the top
pinch-hitters in the game and endeared himself to the Met faithful, even
opening up a couple of well-liked restaurants in NYC along the way.
A few little "extras" about his career: Staub is one of three players
(along with Ty Cobb and Gary Sheffield) to hit home runs as a teenager
and as a 40-year old, and he is also the only player to amass 500 hits
with four different teams (Astros, Mets, Expos
and Tigers).
He was also the first player to play all 162 games in a season strictly as a Designated Hitter, which was for Detroit in 1978.
