There from the beginning, Ed Kranepool embodied the history of the Mets ∣ Caldera

NEW YORK – So much of the Mets’ inaugural 1962 season was about nostalgia, the celebrated return of National League baseball to New York, and well, losing.

A lot of losing.

Whatever bright future might lie ahead for those Mets couldn’t be viewed at the Polo Grounds, with a roster featuring aged former Brooklyn Dodgers and 71-year-old Casey Stengel at the helm.

Imagine being a 17-year-old from the Bronx and walking into that clubhouse as a player – even just for a three-game cameo?

To any Mets fans still paying admission (or attention) by late September of ’62, Ed Kranepool’s presence in uniform, barely out of James Monroe High, might have represented a whisper of hope.

Hope for that way-off day when talented kids replaced yesterday’s stars and brought the Mets out of the second division.

Kranepool began playing steadily at first base by 1964, as the Mets began building a farm system and making trades – and adding Gil Hodges as manager – that led to their stunning 1969 world championship.

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Kranepool was also there in 1973, when the Mets won a mediocre NL East and nearly toppled the mighty Oakland A’s in the World Series.

Kranepool was still there when it all turned south, with Tom Seaver traded from a crumbling franchise that failed to spend - completely ceding the town to George Steinbrenner’s ascending Yankees.

Monday brought the news that Kranepool had passed away in Florida at age 79, in this terrible year for a Mets family that has lost Bud Harrelson and Jerry Grote and Willie Mays .

In recent years, Kranepool’s declining health required a kidney transplant. He died Sunday of cardiac arrest.

If Kranepool never quite attained the stature of some of his former mates in Mets lore, he persevered, playing through 1979 at age 34 – all 18 seasons spent in Queens.

And many of them were tough years, platooning, fighting for contracts. In ’69, the Mets’ huge midseason trade for first baseman Donn Clendenon impacted Kranepool (who hit a satisfying homer in World Series Game 3 at Shea Stadium).

By the late ‘70s, Kranepool had become an accomplished pinch-hitting specialist on a team going nowhere, which is the player I recall, the career Met who’d been there from the very start.

“I just spoke to Ed last week and we talked about how we were the last two originals who signed with the Mets,’’ said Cleon Jones, in a statement released by the Mets.

“The other 1962 guys came from other organizations. Eddie was a big bonus baby ($80,000), and I wasn’t,’’ said Jones. “He never had an ego and was just one of the guys. He was a wonderful person.”

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Kranepool wasn’t in uniform or in the front office when the Mets spun out of the late ‘70s, early ‘80s mess and started taking back the town.

He’d been among the interested parties trying to put together a team to buy the Mets before the 1980 season, when the Payson family eventually sold to Doubleday and Wilpon.

There may have been a lot more losses than wins for Kranepool, but in remembering that championship season of 1969, he was forever a brash, 25-year-old New Yorker – part of a bright Mets future.

“I’d love to go into Chicago those last two days with a three-game lead (on the Cubs),’’ Kranepool told the great Milt Richman of UPI in June ’69.

“I’d wait until Ernie Banks came out of the dugout and say to him…’Great day to play two.’ ’’

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: There from the beginning, Ed Kranepool embodied the history of the Mets ∣ Caldera