Being Ed Kranepool

[Willets Point]

He's the Original Met as this forum's name attests. Another Met from before my time, but he was legendary. Actually, I don't recall any specific Ed Kranepool stories other than his endurance as a Met and thus holder of many of the Met longevity records.

I'll open this up to the oldtimers to share their Kranepool memories.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I spoke with Ed Kranepool. Around 1978 (maybe his final season of 1979), a game was finishing up with Ed at first base. Jeff Reardon, I think, was on the mound and flew out to center. Ball game. Peeps are congratulating the winning pitcher when the secondbase umpire comes over to inform everybody that time had been called and the last pitch and out doesn't coount. Joe Torre argued, but the umpire pointed out that it was one of his infielders (Frank Taveras?) who had asked for time.

The players reluctantly returned to their positions and Reardon resumed pitching to the same player --- except for three or four pitches, Ralph Kiner (of all people) is yelling from the booth that there's no first baseman. While everbody had returned to their position, Ed had disappeared.

Finally, the absence of a ninth Met was noted. Rather than continue the fiasco for the 396 remaining fans at Shea, they decided to call it a night, and resume the game the next day. Torre had Pete Falcone, I think, finish up the win and then go on to start the next game.

Flash forward to 1984 and Ed is speaking at my school's annual sports banquet. I tell my cross country teammates this story and few believe that such hijinks ever took place on the field. They didn't recall much of the Mets before their then-recent return to prominance).

When the Q&A starts, they egg me on. "Ask him where he went, Edgy, gowon, ask him where he went."

So I repeated this scenario. With my team fully expecting him to say, "Never happened, kid, sit down," he tells this tale, I recall, of him being a secret slob. Rather than going to his locker, undressing, and heading for the shower, his routine was to enter the clubhouse, undress on the way to the shower, and hurl his clothes at his locker. Between his eyes being closed to keep out the shampoo, his ears being muffled by the shower, and his usual head start, it was a while before he noticed that nobody else was in there with him. Nor did he hear his teammates coming off the bench and yelling for him. When they finally caught up to him, he was in no condition to return to the field.

Nonetheless, he wouldn't cop to being the idiot that day, pointing out that the first base umpire stood there for several pitches without noticing that there was no firstbaseman.

If you want to find that game in the UMDB, look for a win in the late seventies with Falcone getting the one-out save and then starting the next day.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Something's amiss. Pete Falcone's first Mets save came in 1980, after Kranepool had retired.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Ayeah, well, maybe (1) it wasn't Falcone who did the finish-and-start or (2) it wasn't scored a save.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Yeah, I had the right year, but the wrong bearded Met. Falcone was the starter of the first game, not the second. Here, the Kranepool SNAFU robs Falcone of a complete game shutout, as the game ends up being suspended and finished the next day. Kevin Kobel is shown to get the last out, but that didn't actually happen until that next day, when he would go on to start this game.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Three memories already there at UMDB.

Basically, it was

(1) Jeffrey Leonard flies to right, and the game ends with a complete-game shutout by Pete Falcone.

(2) The out is discounted, as the second-base umpire had called time. At least that's how I remember it, but retrosheet shows only a three-man crew (Frank Pulli, Andy Olsen, Doug Harvey) working the game, and, with the bases empty, nobody would've been positioned at second. Leonard gets a second at-bat and Leonard singles to right.

(3) The umpires realize that the Mets hadn't fully taken the field and discount the hit.

(4) Houston manager Bill Virdon, claiming that it's not the Astros' fault that the Mets failed to fully return to the field, announces that he is playing the game under protest.

(5) Krane actually returns to his position. (He didn't quite make it to the shower? He returned to the field a little wet? He was jerking me around at the banquet?) Leonard, batting for the third time, flies out, like he did the first time.

(6) Overnight, the league rules in favor of Virdon's protest. Leonard's hit in his second at-bat counts, and the game is to be resumed from that point.

(7) Joe Torre puts the health interests of his fellow Brooklyn Italian ahead of his statistical interests, and has the next day's starter Kevin Kobel begin his day by finishing the previous day's game.

(8) Jos� Cruz grounds out to end it. The damn thing is over.

[RealityChuck]

I remember Ed as one of a group of Mets who came all the way out the Riverhead in the off-season as part of a promo tour. For many years he was the heart of the Mets (as was Rube Walker).

He was their regular first baseman when I started following the team, and only one of three original Mets who played on pennant winning Mets teams (though he was the only one of the three to actually appear in the postseaon with the team).

I also recall when he was part of a syndicate that was trying to buy the team, only to be outbid by Doubleday and Wilpon.

He also ran for some political office, with a TV ad that showed him in his Mets uniform and holding a bat. The Mets immediately had it taken off the air for trademark infringement.

[seawolf17]

I will always have a warm spot in the cockles of my heart for Eddie Kranepool because I met him at a baseball card show once. My dad took me to this huge show at Nassau Coliseum back in the late 80s/early 90s, and he was just there, walking around. I spent a dollar on a Kranepool card from a seller just so I could have him autograph it. I was too young to "remember" him, but I definitely knew him, and it was quite a thrill to meet a Met like that.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

RealityChuck wrote: He also ran for some political office, with a TV ad that showed him in his Mets uniform and holding a bat. The Mets immediately had it taken off the air for trademark infringement.

I never thought of Ed Kranepool as the heart of the Mets. More like the perennial familiar face of the Mets.

That political ad wasn't for Ed himself running for office. The trouble came about when he wore his Mets uniform in a TV ad for Al D'Amato's Senate run. (D'Amato had previously run into copyright trouble when he had Charles M. Schulz's Snoopy endorse his run for town supervisor in, I think, Hempstead. And of course, there was his Lance Ito impression on Imus, where he didn't infringe copyright but taste.)

[MFS62]

Being Ed Kranepool was being a student at James Monore High School in the Bronx when my wife went there. She didn't really know him. She was a year ahead of him, so they weren't in the same classes.

Later

[Guest Edgy DC]

Let's say it. D'Amato was a walking infringement.

One interesting thing posted at the UMDB by Joe Figliola.

A great off-field memory I have of Ed are in the form of two commercials: One was for shaving cream (I want to say Gillette), where the announcer said "From 1962 to 1970, Ed Kranepool batted .239. Then Ed used Gillette shaving cream. From 1971 to 1977, Ed hit .289. How do account for that, Ed?" Then you'd see a closeup of Ed with plenty of lather on his face saying basically, "How should I know?" I always loved the baseball portion of that ad, where you him screwing up and making contact.

The other commercial (circa 1976) Ed was in was a public service announcement for diabetes that featured his son Keith in a YMCA pool with a beach ball and wearing an oversized wet t-shirt.

Pretty kewl that he got something turned around in his mid-career trip to Tidewater. Either that or maybe he just responded well to his gradually decreasing role.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Or it was the shaving cream.

I remember those ads; they were for Gillette Foamy, which I use, probably as a result of those commercials!

"Gillette Foamy is more than thick and rich enough for New York's heavy hitters."