One final last at bat

On October 6, 1985, at Shea Stadium against the Montreal Expos, Rusty Staub was the final batter of the Mets’ season.

The Mets will finish second place and with Darryl Strawberry (23 years old, 27 home runs) and Dwight Gooden (20 years old, 24-4 record), anchoring a young and talented team, the Mets are primed for promise.

Almost in anticipation of ticker-tape parades to come, the fans are shredding paper and throwing it onto the field: hot dog wrappers, pages torn from programs, newspapers, toilet paper, falling to the ground or getting swept up into a current circling the inside of Shea Stadium.

From WWOR's game broadcast, 10/6/85

Staub watches paper falling through the air and fouls off the first two pitches, then takes a ball. Indifferent ownership, the inability to get funding for a new stadium, dropping attendance and other economic pressures over the coming two decades would tip the scale in favor of a relocation, and in 2004, the Expos became the Washington Nationals.

Another pitch out of the strike zone for a ball. Staub began his major league career as a 19-year-old with the Houston Astros in 1963; Shea Stadium opened the following year as a multi-purpose stadium built for baseball and football. Aging badly and with the trend towards stadiums built expressly for baseball (while acknowledging a certain old-time vibe – archways, brick facades, distinctive angles to the outfields), Shea was demolished in 2009, replaced by Citi Field.

He calls time, distracted by more paper falling from the rightfield grandstand. The count goes to three balls and two strikes. Never a Hall of Famer, but certainly a first-ballot induction in any mythical Hall of the Nearly Great, Staub retired that winter to organize charitable programs and focus on his Manhattan restaurant, Rusty's, specializing in steaks and ribs. Nearly 30 years to the day of his final at bat, on a flight from Ireland to the U.S., he went into cardiac arrest. Two doctors on board assisted in resuscitating him. He died in 2018, three days before his 74th birthday.

The last swing of the bat is a grounder to the Montreal second baseman, who bobbles the ball but still throws the slow-running Staub out at first. Even the best batters succeed only three out of ten times. The field is littered with white paper, resembling a tentative late autumn snowfall that barely covers the grass, a reminder that winter is right around the corner.