Card of the Moment #83: The Congratulations to Le Grande Orange Edition
February 8th, 2012 by slangon
Today’s Card of the Moment is brought to us by the letters H, O and F. And of course the color orange. And poutine.
1964 Topps #109 Rusty Staub
Yesterday it was announced the Rusty Staub will be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. Quite honestly, I had no idea such a thing existed, but apparently it does. They have an interweb home page and everything.
Rusty will be officially inducted into the Canadian equivalent of Cooperstown on June 23 along with Rheal Cormier, Doug Melvin and the 2011 Team Canada Senior National Team, who won the Bronze Medal at the 2011 Pan Am Games. I guess that’s good enough to be Hall-worthy.
While Rusty has so far not been deemed good enough for inclusion in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he did have a pretty awesome career. He spent 23 years playing the Major Leagues, which is pretty impressive in itself. He hung up his spikes with a .279/.362/.431 slash line, 292 home runs and 1466 RBI. He also scored 1189 runs and had 499 doubles. He was a 6 time All-Star and was in the Top 25 of MVP voting 6 times.
Aside from his impressive, Canadian Hall of Fame worthy numbers, he holds a couple of distinctions as far as his place in baseball history. He is the only player in the history of the game to chalk up 500 or more hits for 4 different teams. He logged 792 hits during his 6 years in Houston. He hit safely 709 times during his 2 stints with the Mets. While in Montreal, he got 531 hits over 4 seasons. Finally, while playing for the Tigers, he wracked up another 582 base knocks over 4 years.
He is also the only player aside from Tyrus R. Cobb to hit a Major League home run while younger than 20 as well as over the age of 40. He hit his first Major League blast on June 3, 1963, off of Don Drysdale no less. He was 19 years, 2 months and 2 days old at the time. He hit the final dinger of his career while with the Mets on June 22, 1985, coincidentally off of Jeff Reardon who began his career with the Mets and was pitching for Montreal at the time. Rusty was 41 years, 2 months and 21 days old at the time.
So congrats to Rusty and all the other inductees. Enjoy your day in the Canadian spotlight.
I love that card!
It is an awesome card and I like Rusty despite his tendency to get key hits against the Cubs.
Hey, I just picked up a Staub card and I didn’t even know about his induction!