Former Mets teammates fondly recall Rusty Staub’s career

Rusty Staub was all about hitting.

“As soon as we were able to get up and walk, Dad had bats made for us,’’ Chuck Staub, 76, said Thursday after the death of his brother, who would have turned 74 on Easter Sunday. “It started with tennis balls.’’

In 1961, when Rusty Staub was a senior at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, scouts from 16 major-league teams came to see the lefthanded batter hit a baseball. The Red Sox emissary was none other than retired slugger Ted Williams.

“Ted came and spent a week,’’ Chuck Staub said. “We have a picture of him having dinner at our house. There was a whole plethora of stuff that he taught us about hitting. I would say that has as much to do with Rusty’s ability to hit a baseball as anything. Ted Williams was the guy.’’

Staub never became the Hall of Fame hitter Williams was, but it wasn’t for lack of trying, as former Mets pitcher Jon Matlack said.

“We had a bat room [in Shea Stadium], and half of it belonged to Rusty,” Matlack said. “When the order came in, he hand-inspected and hand-weighed and labeled every bat. He kept a book on who he faced, what size, weight, length of bat he used against them. When you get down to what part of an ounce you have to swing against so-and-so, that’s pretty incredible. He was a scientist about it.’’

What turned out to be Staub’s “little red book’’ on pitchers started when he arrived in the majors with the Houston Colt .45s at 19 in 1963 and remained with him throughout his 23-year career. He had more than 500 hits for four different teams and totaled 2,716 for his career.

“He let me look through it,’’ close friend and former teammate Keith Hernandez said through tears at Citi Field. “It went back to Bob Friend. And Joey Jay. It went back through the Sixties and Seventies . . . I said, ‘Let me have the book.’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You didn’t earn it.’ So when he retired, his going-away present the day he retired, he gave me the book. I still have it at home.’’

Ed Kranepool started with the Mets in 1962 but learned quite a lot about hitting when Staub arrived in 1972 for the first of two tours with the Mets.

“He was one guy you wanted to talk to about hitting,’’ Kranepool said. “He hit the way you were supposed to. In batting practice, he would hit the ball to all fields. He had the power to hit home runs, but he didn’t try to hit everything out of the ballpark. He worked on his trade and became a great hitter. He could pick up a pitcher’s weakness, if he was holding the ball differently, or whatever he was doing with his glove. And he was willing to share it all with anybody.’’

Bud Harrelson, another former teammate, said, “He was smart. He knew what he was doing. He knew the pitchers. If he saw a pitcher that he didn’t see before, the next time, he’s going to beat the guy. He used to say, ‘Bud, hit the ball through the middle, the pitchers don’t like it, so you get on base.’ ’’

Staub hit three home runs against the Reds in the 1973 NLCS. Matlack was the winning pitcher in Game 2 against Don Gullett, who gave up a fourth-inning homer to Staub.

“Rusty said, ‘Keep them close, because I’ve got Gullett’s pitches,’ ” Matlack said. “ ‘I’m going to get him.’ He was true to his word. He was amazing with his ability to find little things that a pitcher would do.’’

Former Mets pitcher and current SNY analyst Ron Darling said Staub would let his teammates know when something irked him.

“I pitched a game and felt good about myself, because the team had won,’’ Darling said. “Rusty used to always sit at the end of the bench with a bat — it was a huge bat. And he used to love to bang your shins with it. And he’d bang your shins with it and say, ‘You know, yesterday’s game was pretty good for you, but that slow curveball you throw to righthanded hitters — you’ve got to get rid of that, son. That just does not work in this game.’ I remember it not just because it was something that I never threw again, but because it hurt. He hit me in the shin.’’

Darling also admired the leadership Staub displayed off the field, saying, “I never met anyone like him. That’s unusual. Everyone ends up being just about like everyone else. He was not that guy. You know his career. You know how hard he fought for players’ rights.

“I remember just a personal story about me. When I was a young player, I wanted to live in the city — this is probably ancient to even think of this concept — the Mets said no.

“Rusty marched into Frank’s office [general manager Frank Cashen] and said not only can he live anywhere he wants to live but that he would watch me, take care of me and make sure I was ready every fifth day. So he didn’t need to do that. Barely knew me.

“You would sit on the bench with him and you would get a tutorial on how to play the game. The history of the game. He changed certainly Keith’s life and certainly changed mine.”

With Laura Albanese