The Mets fed the fetish by distributing orange towels to the fans who shoehorned themselves into the ballpark for Game 3. And when masses waved those towels in unison, the Big Citi looked as if the first 40,000 fans had been given complimentary bottles of Tide.
It was all well and good, and then it got better. Rusty showed up.
Eleven days after he died, Rusty Staub was back. There was Le Grande Orange in living color as NBC used to say -- emphasis on living. He was moving up the dugout steps as he had so often in the eighth and ninth innings of games at Shea Stadium in the first half of the 80's.