1965 Topps #144 Ed Kranepool
About Ed Kranepool
Card #144 is a plain second-series number, no rookie designation and nothing high or semi-high about it. The back covers 1964 and career bests to that point: 108 hits, 10 home runs and 45 RBI in 119 games. It had been a strange road to those numbers. Batting .139 on May 13 he was shipped to Buffalo, hit .352 in fifteen games, and came straight back for a Sunday doubleheader at brand-new Shea Stadium, which had opened that April. The nightcap ran 23 innings and Kranepool played every one of them, 50 innings of baseball in two days, at nineteen.
Ed Kranepool was born November 8, 1944, in the Bronx and starred at James Monroe High School before the expansion Mets signed him on June 27, 1962 for an $80,000 bonus. He debuted that September 22 at seventeen, the first teenager to play for the club, and was still on the roster in 1979 as the last man left from the original 1962 Mets. A left-handed first baseman who also worked the outfield, he spent all eighteen of his major league seasons in New York, the longest tenure in franchise history, and remains the Mets' all-time leader in games played with 1,853, alongside 1,418 hits, 118 home runs, 614 RBI and a .261 average. He was New York's lone All-Star representative in 1965 and homered in Game Three of the 1969 World Series, then reached the Series again with the 1973 National League champions. Late in his career 'Steady Eddie' became one of the game's most reliable pinch hitters, batting .396 off the bench from 1974 through 1978 and going 17-for-35 in 1974 for a .486 mark that still stands as the season record for pinch hitting. He later worked as a stockbroker and restaurateur, joined the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1990, and died September 8, 2024, in Boca Raton, Florida.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · MLB.com
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 369 | 3 | 69 | 180 | 73 | 27 | 10 | 7 | 0 |
| SGC | 31 | 0 | 2 | 13 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. Half grades fold down for both graders (8.5→8); PSA qualified slabs (OC, ST, PD, MC and the like) are not counted. The two checklist variations, #79 and #508, are listed under the wording PSA uses for each state.
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Related cards
Team card: #551 New York Mets
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- #73 Dennis Ribant
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- #114 Jim Hickman
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- #187 Casey Stengel
- #205 Warren Spahn
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- #258 Larry Bearnarth
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #144 card?
It is card #144 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Kranepool of the New York Mets.
How many cards are in the 1965 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 600 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no printed-number collisions, and two checklist cards - #79 and #508 - carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball Almanac, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-11.