Around The Horn

“We didn’t swap wives — we swapped lives.” — Mike Kekich

“Don’t make anything sordid out of this.” — Fritz Peterson

Yeah, right.

It was only the strangest trade in baseball history.

On March 5, 1973, at the New York Yankees’ spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson announced they had swapped wives, two children apiece and even family dogs. (For the record, the Kekiches had a terrier, the Petersons a poodle.)

This would have been big news had the two hurlers — both left-handers, of course — played in, say, Milwaukee or Cincinnati. But because they pitched for baseball’s most famous club in the nation’s largest city, the unexpected news traveled faster than any pitch thrown by either.

It didn’t matter that a syndicate headed by an unknown Cleveland shipbuilder named George Steinbrenner just had bought the Yankees from CBS. It didn’t matter that Yankees journeyman Ron Blomberg would become baseball’s first designated hitter a few weeks later. The story throughout baseball that spring clearly was Kekich and Peterson.

Or Peterson and Kekich. To many, the two seemed interchangeable — in public and, more interestingly, in private.

The ballplayers and their spouses, Susanne Kekich and Marilyn Peterson, had been friends since 1969. Both families lived in New Jersey, and their children were about the same age. Often they all would visit the Bronx Zoo or the shore or enjoy a picnic together. Friends and neighbors marveled at how close they were.

Too close.

At some point during the 1972 season, Mike Kekich fell for Marilyn Peterson, and Fritz Peterson fell for Susanne Kekich. Who knows how or why? All we know is that something happened to all four.

Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn was “appalled” but powerless to interfere. Kuhn later said he received more mail about the swap than about the American League’s introduction of the DH — another development that made baseball purists gnash their teeth and rend their garments that year.

The only light moment came when Yankees general manager Lee MacPhail cracked, “We may have to call off Family Day.”

The affair (perhaps an unfortunate word) began in 1972, when the two couples joked on a double-date about wife-swapping, a phenomenon that caught on in some uninhibited circles during the early ’70s.

According to one report, the first swap took place that summer after a boozy party at the home of New York sportswriter Maury Allen. The couples made the changes official in October, Mike moving in with Marilyn and Fritz with Susanne, but no word leaked out until spring.

“We didn’t do anything sneaky or lecherous,” Susanne insisted after the situation became public knowledge. “There isn’t anything smutty about this. … But you have to admit there are some funny aspects.”

Marilyn said nothing for public consumption. Neither did the two pitchers at the time, possibly under orders from Steinbrenner.

The story remained a hot topic for months, partly because most male athletes regard intimacy with a teammate’s woman as strictly verboten — violating the sanctity of the locker room and all that. Look what a mess materialized last year when Karl Malone asked the young wife of Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant, “Do you like me?” And nobody in authority laughed when Anna Benson, the hot wife of New York Mets pitcher Kris Benson, threatened to sleep with the whole team if he cheated on her.

You see, there’s nothing wrong with sex in baseball — as long as it’s beneath the surface. After all, little kids might be watching.

The Yankees’ two new bedroom batteries led to very different results. The liaison between Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson flamed out after a couple of months. But following their divorces, Fritz Peterson and Susanne Kekich married, had four children and are still together.

“Neither Fritz Peterson nor I will ever make it into the Hall of Fame,” Kekich said years later. “But I know our names keep popping up in the Hall of Shame. I don’t lose any sleep over it, but I really don’t think it’s fair.”

Kekich seemed the biggest loser, in more ways than one. Previously noted mainly as the pitcher who surrendered Frank Howard’s home run in the Washington Senators’ last game two years earlier, he was traded early in the 1973 season to Cleveland, where he went 2-5 with a 7.48 ERA. The following year, the Indians cut him.

“My whole career went into a black hole [after the swap],” Kekich said. “It was awful.”

Of his short-lived fling with Marilyn Peterson, Kekich recalled, “Marilyn and I thought we were perfectly suited, just like Fritz and Susanne. Marilyn was all for the swap in the beginning, but then she backed off. All four of us had agreed in the beginning that if anyone wasn’t happy, the thing would be called off. But when Marilyn and I decided to call it off, the other couple already had gone off with each other.”

When Kekich ended his nine-year major league career in 1977, he had a 39-51 record. Long afterward, he remarried and had a daughter.

Peterson, a much better pitcher, went 133-131 over 11 seasons before retiring in 1976. He was 17-13 in his last pre-swap season of 1972. The following year, hooted handsomely around the American League, he dropped to 8-15.

“Fritz was never the same after the swap,” said Fred Beene, another pitcher for the Yankees in ‘73. “He was practically destroyed by all the negative reaction.”

Nowadays, another friend said, “Fritz has a latent desire to be a hermit. But he and Susanne are very, very happy.”

Understandably, both men have avoided the spotlight for years. Each went into business and endured financial troubles. A few years ago, Peterson and Susanne were living outside Chicago, where he worked as a boat dealer. Kekich, after failing to establish a career in medicine, was with his second wife in Albuquerque, N.M. Marilyn, according to one report, was existing in “Midwestern obscurity.”

Fritz Peterson is 63 and Mike Kekich almost 60 now, the passions of youth long spent. As far as we know, there has been no contact between them for years and decades.

Need you ask why?

Source: Columnist Dick Heller in The Washington Post (Kekich and Peterson made strangest trade in ‘73)

1967 was a memorable year, for anyone that was a Red Sox fan. By using RetroSheet you could follow the play by play of each game. Baseball avatars that looked just like Yaz and Tony C. and the rest would act out on the field exactly as it happened 40 years ago.

Avatars are video game characters that could be made to look anyway you want. The example I have is this production made by Curtis Jackson. Babe Ruth in this video looks just like he did when he was 23 years old, and playing in Boston.

The entire game would take 15 minutes showing all the action of every play. Newspaper accounts of each game would be read from either The Globe or Record American. Each show would last 30 minutes and the standings would be kept just like it was 40 years ago.

1967 was known as the great race. The Red Sox, Twins, Tigers, and White Sox all came down to the last weekend separated by less than 2 games.  Of all the teams Boston was the 100 to 1 long shot. 

The standings as of September 27 were:

                 W    L  PCT    GB
Twins       91   69 .569     -
Tigers      89   69 .563   1.0
Red Sox    90   70 .563   1.0
White Sox   89   70 .560   1.5

The games to be recreated:

April 12 Opening Day Fenway Longborg’s first victory

April 14 Billy Rohr

April 16 18 innings in NY

April 29 15 innings with Kansas City

May 30 Memorial Day Doubleheader, Rico executes a suicide squeeze

June 15, Tony C ends it in the 11

July 27 10 innings with Angels

July 29 twi-nighter with Minn

Aug 18 Tony C goes down

Aug 19 12-11 over Angels

Aug 20 9-8 after trailing 8-0

Aug 27 Elston Howard blocks the plate

Aug 29 NY Boston 20 innings

Aug 30 NY 11 innings

Sept 18  Dalton Jones Detroit

Sept 19 Yaz Detroit

Sept 30 Twins Yaz and Scott

Oct 1 Twins Longborg bunts

The 7 game World Series with St. Louis will be recreated by using RareSportsFiles: This is a 1 hour 42 minute highlight flim of the 1967 World Series that has been digitally enhanced. I as told that the quality of this is superior to anything that MLB now possess. It was sent to me yesterday.

Players like Rico and Longborg could be part of a NESN panel. The final show for this 1967 season would be the playing of the album by Ken Coleman, “The Impossible Dream.” The audio from that album will have pictures added to it, to bring back all the joy and drama, of that year that really was a dream, and until that year Red Sox fans thought it was impossible to happen to them.

A range of individuals made up the 1927 roster of the New York Yankees. The average age was 27.6. All white, they came from diverse backgrounds, had very different personalities, professional backgrounds, educations, interests, skills, avocations.

There was a former teacher, a railroad fireman, a bartender, a boilermaker, a seaman, a logger, a cardsharp, one who had studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, another who as a kid had climbed the tenement stairs in New York City delivering laundry, swam in the Hudson River and knew his way around local pool halls. There was one who had an almost royal aura who had attended the finest prep schools and wore thousand dollar diamond rings, there was a meat cutter and an ex-vaudevillian. There was a former full time boilermaker, a talented painter, artist, writer and singer, a skilled piano (jazz and classical) player, several former farm boys and farmers.

And a few who had never known anything but playing baseball.

Baseball was what bound the 25 of them together. The total payroll for that 1927 team was an estimated $250,000, while the average salary was $10,000 as compared to $2,699.292 for the 2006 Yankees. Salaries ranged from Julie Wera’s $2,400 to Babe Ruth’s $70,000.

The team had a pronounced German-American flavor from its owner beer baron Jacob Ruppert to Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mark Koenig, Bob Meusel, George Pipgras, Dutch Ruether and half Germans Waite Hoyt and Earle Combs.

There was also a collegiate flavor: Lou Gehrig (Columbia), Miller Huggins (University of Cincinnati), Joe Dugan (Holy Cross), Benny Bengough (Niagara University), Earle Combs (Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College), Mike Gazella (Lafayette), Ray Morehart (Stephen Austin College, Texas), Myles Thomas (Penn State), Bob Shawkey (Slippery Rock State Normal School), Ben Paschal (University of Alabama), Dutch Ruether (St. Ignatius College, now San Francisco University) One player received his education at St. Mary’s Industrial School and another had been in an out of one room cotton county schoolhouses. A few had no true formal education at all.

Born in 1904, the youngest player on the roster was Mark Koenig. He, along with Johnny Grabowski, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and Julie Wera were the only Yankees born in the 20th century.

The shortest players were catcher Benny Bengough and utility man Mike Gazella. Bob Meusel was the tallest Yankee at 6′ 3″ and Babe Ruth was the next tallest at 6′ 2″. Other six footers included pitchers Wilcy Moore, Herb Pennock, George Pipgras, Dutch Ruether, infielders Lou Gehrig and Mark Koenig, and centerfielder Earle Combs. The only members of the 1927 Yankees who weighed more than 200 pounds were Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

There was no roster shuttling of players back and forth from the minor leagues. The 25 players who began the season remained on the roster all season long, tying a record for fewest players used by a major league team.

Only Lou Gehrig would start every game (155) at first base. Tony Lazzeri appeared in 113 games at second base, Mark Koenig 122 at shortstop and Joe Dugan 111 at third base. Earle Combs would start all but three games. The final statistics on Ruth and Meusel would be misleading. The Babe would start 95 times in right field and “Silent Bob” 83 times in left field. But they flip-flopped starts at Yankee Stadium and in a few parks on the road. Six men accounted for almost 90% of the innings pitched.

There was an almost grotesque quality to the team collectively as well as individually. One player could only sleep sitting up. He had a heart condition that he kept secret from his teammates. Another seemingly aloof, sometimes painfully quiet, was an epileptic whose condition was never mentioned by the press. One was taciturn, some would say miserable, a drinker, a scowler who looked at the world about him with annoyance and anger. One worked off-season as a mortician. Another was a “mama’s boy,” allegedly a virgin, who was very uncomfortable in the presence of women, enjoyed fishing by himself for eels and living with his parents in an apartment. There was one whose hearty belches sometimes rattled bats stacked in the dugout, who slugged down great quantities of beer, ate prodigiously. His prowess with women was the talk throughout baseball. Another was an uneducated dirt farmer, aged 30, or was it 40. There was also a Kentuckian, a church goer, a non-smoker, non-drinker, a man who never cursed and read his Bible on the road in hotel rooms.

There were ten pitchers on the roster, three catchers, seven infielders and five outfielders.

(This is an excerpt from a book to be published by John Wiley, Fall 2007

====================================================

Harvey Frommer is now in his 33rd consecutive year of writing sports books. He is the author of 38 sports books, including the classics: “New York City Baseball,” and “Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball.”

Frommer sports books are available direct from the author - discounted and autographed.

FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in excess of 750,000 and appears on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.