Ed Kranepool, who jumped from a Bronx high school to the big leagues with the original Mets at age 17 and spent all 18 of his major league seasons in Flushing, died Sunday in Boca Raton, Fla., after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 79.
Kranepool, a left-handed hitting first baseman who was a member of the Mets’ first two World Series teams, had received a kidney transplant in 2019. He also suffered from diabetes.
Days after graduating from James Monroe High School where he broke Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg’s long-standing home run record, Kranepool signed with the Mets and received an $80,000 bonus.
“I chose the Mets not only because they offered me enough money, they also provided an opportunity to make the big leagues in the shortest possible time,” Kranepool said years later. “For my career, it was very important.”
He joined the team in Los Angeles on June 30, 1962 – the first time he had ever been on an airplane – and arrived just in time to sit in the dugout and watch Sandy Koufax no-hit his new teammates. After a week without playing, he was sent to the minors where he tried a few levels – in reverse order, falling from Triple-A Syracuse to what was then called Class-A, all the way to Class-D.