Ed Kranepool, the legendary Mets player who died Sunday after suffering cardiac arrest while attending a Mets game, recently reflected on his first airplane trip and first major league game. Just 17 years old, he'd graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx and had just signed with the Mets for $85,000 as a bonus baby, and team brass had put him on a plane to join the 1962 inaugural Mets team as they took on the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
Club officials were hoping he'd learn from the pros, but it scared and scared him almost to the point that he was hurt. Wouldn't you know it? In his first game after signing, Kranepool watched Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher of his generation, maybe any generation, no-hitter a terrible Mets team.
This prompted a teenage Kranepool to turn to coach Casey Stengel on the bench and ask, “What have I gotten myself into?”
Always the competitive type, Kranepool was the only one of the 1962 Mets players who had told me a month earlier that he was rooting for the inept White Sox to break the Mets' record of 120 losses. Sixty-two years later, he still wanted to eliminate any tenuous connection to professional baseball's version of the Bad News Bears.
In fairness, Kranepool shouldn't be associated with history's list of hysterical losers, because he wasn't one. In fact, he wasn't even of voting age the first time he suited up in a Mets uniform, and he only played three games and appeared at bat just six times for that awful '62 team.
Kranepool was only brought to Los Angeles to learn, and he was lucky not to pick up any bad habits. The most notorious player on the 1962 Mets was Marv Throneberry. Kranepool was primarily a first baseman throughout his illustrious 18-year career (all with the Mets), but he knew he shouldn't try to emulate the man known, ironically, as Marvelous Marv.
Kranepool should be remembered not as an occasional observer of early history and buffoonery, but for his involvement with the 1969 Mets miracle and his loyalty, consistency and adaptability. Just 24 during that incredible 1969 season, Kranepool hit 11 home runs for that historic team, but accepted a part-time role after the Mets acquired star first baseman Don Clendenon. He ended up spending another decade in Flushing.
That period was long enough for Kranepool to improve his batting average significantly, becoming a .280+ hitter (.261 overall) for much of his later years. It wasn't until the middle of Kranepool's second decade in Queens that he became a free agent, but even through numerous managers and executives, Kranepool remained a constant.
“If there was ever a Mr. Mets, it was Eddie Kranepool,” a heartbroken longtime teammate, friend and 1969 hero, Ron Swoboda, told The Post. “He was a New Yorker and a New York Mets man through and through.”
Tom Seaver is forever a franchise. But Kranepool is forever a Mets, legendary for his longevity and loyalty. Like Seaver, Kranepool was highly intelligent, strongly opinionated and competitive. But he was a born-and-raised New Yorker, and, as Swoboda recalls, “was everywhere.” [in New York]” But even though I felt bitter at times, I saw it through to the end.
Kranepool is an entrepreneur who has been busy since retiring early: a stockbroker, a restaurateur (he and Swoboda were co-owners of the Dugout Restaurant in Amityville) and a credit card company. He helped put together a group that tried to buy the Mets about a decade ago, and although they failed, he never lost his loyalty.
He lived in Jericho for many years, but his health began to decline, and he spent his final years wintering in Boca Raton, Florida, with his boat parked off the coast of the Hamptons. Kranepool had diabetes, but thanks to a campaign with the team, he found a kidney donor a few years ago, and, not surprisingly, he was a very generous Mets fan. Thanks to his new kidney, transplanted at Stony Brook University Hospital, he won't have to undergo dialysis for the rest of his life. His heart finally stopped while watching the Mets lose to the Reds.
Kranepool is a lifelong Mets fan, and the orange and blue are never out of his blood. When I spoke to him a month ago, he still had that baseball-man fighting spirit. He was eager to erase a team known for its losing records — the '62 Mets (and it's hard to call them the '62 Mets) — from the record books. Regarding the astonishingly awful White Sox and the possibility that they could surpass the Mets' first-year ineptitude and take the record, Kranepool told me, “Let the White Sox do it. It's not a record I'm proud of.”
It's a shame Kranepool wasn't around to see that record broken (though the South Side team seems well on its way to doing just that), but in fairness, he was little more than a witness to bad history. Kranepool's real legacy was as a team-first guy, a stalwart of the Miracle Mets, a loyal New Yorker who endured legendary good times and bad despite having little patience for losing.
