Rusty staub professional#

Staub set hitting records while at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, and got on the national map as a prospective major leaguer when his Jesuit-based American League team, Tulane Shirts (which also included his brother Chuck), won the state title and advanced to the Legion Little World Series in Hastings, Nebraska, in 1960. But I’m sure if Rusty or myself wanted to play the violin, Dad would have bust a gut swinging a deal for the best violin money could buy.” Ray not only taught them the fundamentals of baseball, but also instilled in them the meaning of teamwork and the realization that the fun of winning wasn’t in defeating someone else but in bring out the best in them.” “He (Ray), didn’t push us into sports,” Chuck later recalled in the book Rusty Staub of the Expos.

However, Ray worked extra jobs to make ends meet, and he always made time for his sons Rusty and Chuck, whom he introduced to baseball at very young ages. Raising a family on a teaching salary in the 1940s and 1950s meant he children weren’t afforded too many luxuries. But after two years in the low minors he had to quit when he suffered an injury to his hand that doctors said would never fully heal.

Rusty staub professional#

Staub essentially inherited his love of baseball from his father, Ray, who took a shot at professional baseball after college.

From the New Orleans sandlots, he went on to become one of the most prolific hitters in Major League Baseball, coming close to the majors’ magical 3,000-hit club with over 2,700 career hits. The red-headed Staub came from a family steeped in baseball, and the sport became ingrained in him at a very young age. Former major-league ballplayer and New Orleans native Daniel Joseph “Rusty” Staub died on Thursday at age 73, just a few days shy of his birthday.īorn on April 1, 1944, Staub was no April Fool’s Day joke when it came to hitting baseballs.