From Casey Stengel's "Amazin's," the lovable losers of the early '60s, to the World Series champions of the '80s and the pennant contenders of today, the Mets have fielded some great players in their nearly half-century of existence, and one person who has had an up-close-and-personal view of most of them is Rusty Staub. Staub is one of the few former Mets who can recall every year of the team's history. He has seen everyone who has ever played a game for the New York Mets, and has been a teammate or opponent of most of them. As such, he is uniquely qualified to take on the challenging and enormous task of selecting the all-time greatest players in Mets history in Few and Chosen: Defining Mets Greatness across the Eras. Signed out of high school by the Houston Colt-45s (later the Astros) in September 1961, he was promoted to Houston as a 19-year-old in 1963, the year after the Mets and Colt-45s came into existence as National League expansion teams. After six seasons in Houston and two with the Montreal Expos, Staub spent a total of nine years with the Mets before closing out an extraordinary 23-year major league career. A year after he retired, Staub was inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame. A native of New Orleans, Staub made New York his adopted home and is among the most popular and most recognized players in Mets history. Staub continued to be a prominent figure on the New York scene as a restaurateur and with the Mets as a coach and broadcaster. He remains associated with the Mets to this day as a goodwill ambassador.