Legendary Mets Hitter Rusty Staub Dies Of Organ Failure, Heart Attack At 73; Tributes Pour In

Rusty Staub, the beloved New York Mets hitting icon, died early Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida at age 73.

Mets Legend Rusty Staub Death News

Staub played for the Mets, Houston, Montreal and Detroit and was known to Montreal fans as “Le Grand Orange.” He died of a heart attack, his brother Chuck said. Staub had reportedly been battling several health issues in recent years, including multiple organ failure. In October 2015, Staub suffered a near-fatal heart attack on a flight from Ireland to New York.

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The hitter was also very recently discovered to be suffering from cellulitis, which evolved into a blood infection that resulted in a shutdown of his kidneys. Staub — a 6-foot-2 left-handed batter who weighed 240 pounds late in his career — was initially admitted to Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach with dehydration, pneumonia and an infection. He had spent the last eight weeks in the hospital, and would have been 74 on Sunday.

Staub was also known as a gourmet chef and a wine connoisseur.

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An All-Star for all three seasons he played with the expansion team Montreal Expos (1969-1971), Staub praised the arrival of pro baseball in Canada.

“I was in Quebec — I couldn’t talk to a child,” Staub said to The Montreal Gazette in 2012. “I couldn’t say something encouraging. I felt like I was not doing my job — not being able to respond to the media at least in some basic form.”

“I took about 25 French classes after the first season, and the next year I took longer classes,” he continued. “There’s not a question that my making that effort is part of the reason that whatever Le Grand Orange represented to Montreal and all those fans, they knew I cared and I tried.”

Staub also revealed he earned the “Big Orange’ nickname even before he landed in Montreal in a trade with Houston.

“The name wasn’t formalized for the public until one day when we were playing in Los Angeles,” he explained. “I hit a home run and made a pretty good catch when Willie Crawford hit a pea against the fence. The next day in the newspapers, I was ‘Le Grand Orange.’ And in both English and French papers, it stayed that way.”

The Expos traded Staub to the Mets in 1972. One year later, he helped send them to a National League pennant, hitting three home runs in their five-game win over the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Championship Series. He also injured his shoulder during that series.

Staub returned to the Expos in a trade in July 1979. In his first at-bat back at Olympic Stadium, fans gave him a standing ovation. He retired with the Mets in 1985.

Besides his brother, Staub is survived by his sisters, Sally Johnston and Susan Tully. 

After leaving baseball, Staub became president of the Rusty Staub Foundation, which has supported emergency food pantries throughout New York by working with Catholic Charities.

He equally helped form the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund, which has raised millions of dollars for the families of uniformed personnel killed in the line of duty.

When MLB returned to New York for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Mets played the Atlanta Braves. The Mets donated proceeds from that game, about $450,000, to the fund for widows and children.

That evening, Staub stated the non-profit had donated about $8.3 million in the 15 years prior to the attacks.

Among the famous media figures who paid tribute to Staub on social media were Keith Olbermann, Anthony DiComo and Mike Lupica: