Ed Kranepool

Edward Emil Kranepool
(The Krane)

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 6' 3", Weight 215 lb.
• High School James Monroe High School (Bronx)
• Debut September 22, 1962
• Final Game September 30, 1979
• Born November 8, 1944 in New York, NY USA
• Died September 8, 2024 in Boca Raton, FL USA

BR page

Biographical Information

"Kranepool flies to right. Agnew resigns." - note passed to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, while listening to oral arguments during the 1973 postseason

"Steady Eddie" Kranepool played in every New York Mets season from their inaugural season of 1962, when he was a 17-year-old barely out of high school, through 1979. Despite very ordinary career statistics in which he never came close to hitting 20 homers or compiling 100 RBI, this big, strapping hometown New Yorker perfectly fit the new poster boy image of the hybrid and fledgling Mets.

Possessing a valuable left-handed bat, Kranepool was a good first baseman and could play the corner outfield positions as well. He hit .268 against right-handers but only .220 against lefties. He held the Mets club record with 1,488 career hits until David Wright passed him on September 26, 2012. He was a member of the Mets' World Championship team in 1969 as the most-used first baseman on the team until Donn Clendenon came along. He hit .238 with 11 homers and 49 RBIs in 112 games that season, and went 1 for 4 with a home run in the World Series upset of the Baltimore Orioles; the homer came off reliever Dave Leonhard in the 8th inning of a 5-0 Mets win in Game 3 on October 14th. On April 29th that year, he homered twice to account for all the runs in a 2-0 win over the expansion Montreal Expos; that made him the first player to have a multi-homer game against the Expos, after having been the starter at first base in the fist game the Expos ever played on April 8th. He also played for the Mets in the 1974 World Series, which they lost in seven games to the Oakland Athletics; he went 0 for 3 as a pinch-hitter.

In 1974, during the regular season, he hit an amazing .486 (17 for 35) as a pinch hitter, which is the highest batting average ever for someone with 30 or more pinch at bats. Kranepool concluded his long career with the Mets at age 34, having logged 18 major league seasons (a Mets record), and is still the club's all-time leader in games played and third on their hits list. He was inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame in 1990.

At the end of his career, Ed starred in several ads for Gillette razors. In 1979, he appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch during spring training, where fictional former Met great Chico Escuela (played by Garrett Morris) was attempting to return with the Mets after writing his tell-all memoir, Bad Stuff About The Mets. In 1999, Krane played himself in an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.

Notable Achievements

• NL All-Star (1965)
• Won a World Series with the New York Mets in 1969

Further Reading

• Len Hochberg: "Ed Kranepool, longest-tenured Met and 1969 WS champ, dies at 79", mlb.com, September 9, 2024. [1]
• Ed Kranepool (as told to George Vass): "The Game I'll Never Forget", Baseball Digest, April 1993, pp. 83-84. [2]

Related Sites

• Ed Kranepool at the SABR Bio Project