"You know, you're not going so good yourself."

 

I first became aware of Steady Eddie Kranepool in 1967. He was playing first base for the Mets, the same position as our resident demigod, Mickey Mantle, and wearing the same number, 7.

This seemed like yet another, pathetic Mets imitation of the Yankees. An incredible bit of chutzpah, even, as if their ersatz Mick could be anything close to the real thing.

Then, two years later, the Yanks were still struggling in fifth place, The Mick was gone, and Ed Kranepool was hitting a home run in the World Series.

It was, sadly, only a fleeting highlight in the career of Ed Kranepool, the Last of the Original Mets. 

To be fair, Ed Kranepool's career had other ups, as well as downs. It was, all in all, one of the odder major-league careers—or really, several different careers, one after another.

There were the wunderkind years when, after breaking Hank Greenberg's home-run record at James Monroe High School in the Bronx, young Eddie got $85,000 to sign with the new kids in town. He made his major-league debut that same year, only 17 years old—so young that he was confined to sitting in hotel lobbies on road trips, chaperoned by Mets press secretary, Tom Meany.

At 6-3 and 205, he looked like a slugger coming off the bus, and he slammed balls out of the Polo Grounds in batting practice. In games, though, he was more of a slap hitter, which was a skill not complemented by the fact that he ran like a man in cement overshoes.

"He's only seventeen, but he runs like he's thirty," manager Casey Stengel told the press, then damned him more with faint praise: "He doesn't strike out too often."

It was true, he didn't, especially for a raw kid. He never kayed more than 71 times in a season—but he also never hit more than 16 homers, or ever played anything more than a barely adequate first base or left field.

Still, it looked as though Kranepool might be slowly but surely learning his game in the majors—the hardest way to do it. He made an All-Star team in 1965 (Hey, somebody from the Mets had to be on it.), then came the Miracle Year of 1969.  

But...by 1970, Ed Kranepool was sent down to Tidewater, interrupting a miserable season in which he hit only .170 with the big club. He looked washed up. Still just 25,  he already seemed to have lived a lifetime in the majors.

He rebounded from that, to his infinite credit. He finally made that slap hitting his calling card, batting as high as .323 in one platooned season, making another World Series with the Mets, setting the club record for pinch hits.

Then, at just 34, it was all over. He had played 18 seasons in the bigs—and he couldn't even smell 40.

Regrets? He had a few.

"If I could have seen ahead in 1962, I would have signed with another club.  There was a lot of frustration through the years," he said, with typical frankness, years later.

His second thoughts were evident even then, with an attitude that often bordered—or more—on surly.  

"What do they want? Why don't they just get off my back?" he groused about the amazingly supportive Mets fans.

The Mets brought Dodgers legend Duke Snider—another classic sourpuss—back to New York near the end of his career, in part to work with the young guys like Ed Kranepool. When he tried, 18-year-old Eddie told the Duke of Flatbush:

"You know, you're not going so good yourself."

Well, what can you say? 

He was brought up too fast, and he had grown up hard, his father killed fighting in France four months before he was born, his mother working and scrimping and saving to make ends meet. If a better attitude might have helped him more, can't we all say the same thing for when we were 17?

RIP, Ed Kranepool. You were no Mick, and no Duke, but who is? And how often these days does anyone get to be the last of the original anythings?