Ed Kranepool, who jumped from a Bronx high school to the big leagues with the original Mets at the age of 17 and who 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, pocketing an $80,000 bonus.
“I chose the Mets not only because they offered me enough money, they also presented an opportunity to make the big leagues in the shortest amount of time,” Kranepool said several years later. “For my career that was very important.”
He joined the team in Los Angeles on June 30, 1962 — the first time he had ever been on a plane — and arrived just in time to sit in the dugout and watch Sandy Koufax no-hit his new teammates. After a week of not playing, he was sent to the minors where he sampled a few levels — in reverse order, falling from Triple-A Syracuse to what was then called Class-A, all the way to Class-D.