Monday, May 19, 2025
The Major League Baseball season is well underway. It’s been three weeks since the first pitch was thrown amid all the festivities of Opening Day. As a Brooklyn Dodgers fan since my youth, until they were hijacked from us to Los Angeles, and as a Mets fan since their creation in 1962, baseball has always been a major part of my life.
Love of the game was imparted to me by my father, and it’s something I share with my son and grandson. Whether it’s watching a Mets, Yankees or Long Island Ducks game or going to a local Little League game in Wantagh or Seaford, baseball definitely transcends generations.
What made this year’s Mets opening day more meaningful to me was the tribute to Mets legend Ed Kranepool, who died last year. To honor him, Mets players will wear a patch on their uniform sleeve emblazoned with his number 7 all season.
Kranepool was more than a guy who happened to play for the Mets. In so many ways, he personified what New York baseball was all about. He was the real Mr. Met. Born and raised in the Bronx, he was signed by the Mets when he graduated from high school in 1962, and at age 17 actually played for them in their first season.
Kranepool went on to play 18 seasons, appearing in more games than anyone in Mets history. His career included the peaks and valleys of Mets history. In the team’s first seven years, they didn’t have one winning season. Their horrific 1962 campaign, when they set the major league record for most losses, prompted Jimmy Breslin’s famous book “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?”
But then, in 1969, the “Miracle Mets” shocked the baseball world by winning the World Series. Kranepool, who had suffered and persevered through the dark days, was not only playing on a championship team, but smashed a key home run off the Baltimore Orioles in Game 3 of the Series. And in 1973 he was the team captain when the Mets won the National league championship and, in the World Series, took the mighty Oakland A’s to seven games.
Throughout his career, Kranepool remained a New Yorker, living in Nassau and Suffolk counties and opening a celebrated restaurant, the Dugout, in Amityville. He was also a fixture at countless Little League, charity and community events all over Long Island, and hosted batting and fielding clinics for kids.
Through the rest of his life after he retired from baseball, Kranepool suffered from diabetes and kidney disease, which progressively worsened, necessitating a toe amputation. Never once, though, did I hear him complain or bemoan his fate. After several false starts, he underwent a successful kidney transplant in 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Mets’ miracle season.
Though I was a fan of his from day one, I got to know Kranepool about 10 years ago. He was always a great guy to be with, whether at sports events or at lunch with friends. I particularly looked forward to and always enjoyed lunches with Ed, his Mets teammate Art Shamsky and former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Fred Cambria.
It was a terrific experience just to sit and listen to their stories. What struck me the most was that none of them talked about their own heroics. It was always the other guy. So very different from so many of today’s ego-driven athletes. And I’ll always remember that Kranepool was one of the very first to call me after I had successfully stomach cancer surgery two years ago.
He died last September, from cardiac arrest apparently brought on by the years of diabetes and kidney disease that preceded the kidney transplant. His death was mourned by generations of New York baseball fans.
I focus on Kranepool here because he personified, for me, what baseball in particular and sports in general should be all about, and how they can be lessons for life. Give it your best shot in good times and bad. Don’t panic or complain when life takes a bad turn, or be arrogant when things break your way and you’re on top of the heap.
I think those lessons are especially relevant today, when too many parents put too much pressure on kids to win, forgetting the admonition that it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. If you play hard and give it your best shot, you’ll be a winner in life, no matter what the scoreboard says.
Peter King is a former congressman, and a former chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Comments? pking@ liherald.com.
