Christopher Wuensch - Meet The Mets Via Their Baseball Cards

I’m barreling down I-80 in a rental van, yet I can’t quite seem to out-run two thoughts that keep rolling over and over in my mind; no matter how fast I drive through highway outposts such as Elkhart, Ind., Kearney, Neb., and Jersey Shore, Pa.

What am I going to do with the thousands of baseball cards behind me in the 10-foot long truck? And, who is the poor guy who will have to shovel thousands of Topps, Fleer and Donruss cards off one of the nation’s busiest roadways, should I accidentally wreck this truck somewhere outside of the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Walcott, Iowa?

Moving day in my Northern New Jersey childhood home means the contents of my old bedroom must make its way to the basement of my new Denver home.

With the move, comes a new challenge: sorting and categorizing the thousands of baseball cards (circa 1976 through 1993), pennants and souvenirs stuffed into old shoe boxes of brands of sneakers and shoe stores that no longer exist.

The New York metro area I returned home to say good bye to appeared foreign to me. As I left it behind, my rearview mirror revealed a city with a new skyline, two holes where Yankee and Shea stadiums once respectively stood and an exponentially larger amount of Starbucks on corners where mom-and-pop shops once proudly stood.

The lesson, I gleaned, is that the future is uncertain. There’s no stopping it. But the past, the past is ours forever. And until Stephen Hawking invents time travel, we’ll have to find alternate ways to preserve it.

For me, the history is in the cards of Cards, Mariners and Padres — and any other team, player, or old ticket stub that I un-Earth while categorizing this jumbled, cardboard-mess of my youth.

Each Sunday, in this column I’ll attempt to re-tell some baseball history via the baseball cards. I’ll focus on plenty of Mets, but won’t ignore the rest of baseball’s rich history. I'll use the cards to tie the past to the present and to look at the trends of the game that has more tales than I have baseball cards. That's saying a lot.

To begin, I thought I’d start with the first New York Met I found in the vast stash of cardboard.

Fittingly, it was Rusty Staub. This version of La Grand Orange’s 1986 Topps (No. 570) card is far from mint condition, but the first baseman/outfielder’s reputation in Queens is pristine. Staub retired after the 1985 season, but not before leaving quite the legacy, including:

• One of three players to hit a home run before their 20 birthday and after their 40th. He joined Ty Cobb and Gary Sheffield, who hit 10 home runs for the Mets after turning 40.


• The summer this card came out, the Mets inducted him into the franchise’s Hall of Fame. He’s also a member of the Montreal Expos, Texas Baseball and Canadian Baseball hall of fames.


• The first Mets’ player to ever crack 100 RBIs in a season, Staub batted .423 with a home run in the 1973 World Series against the Oakland Athletics—and did so with a bum shoulder suffered while making a diving play in the outfield against the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Championship Series. He still managed to slug three dingers and five RBIs as the Mets advanced to the Fall Classic.


• Staub, who began his career with the Houston Colt .45’s, played 24 seasons for the Astros, Expos (twice), Texas Rangers and Mets (twice). He finished with 292 career round-trippers and 1,466 RBIs.

That’s it for now. It’s off to the basement to find an Anthony Young rookie card to celebrate the Mets’ dubious 50th and 20th anniversaries of Roger Craig’s 18-game losing streak and Young’s streak of 27 winless decisions.