Left to right: Marilyn and Fritz Peterson,
Susanne and Mike Kekich -- as they were then known.
March 5, 1973, 50 years ago: At the New York Yankees' Spring Training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, pitchers Fred "Fritz" Peterson, a 31-year-old lefthanded starter from Chicago, and Mike Kekich, a 27-year-old lefthanded reliever from San Diego, announce that they have engaged in an oh-so-1970s activity: Wife-swapping.
It actually went well beyond that. They'd been teammates since 1969, and they ended up switching entire families. Fritz moved in with Susanne Kekich, while Mike moved in with Marilyn Peterson. The pitchers swapped wives, houses, children, even dogs.
The media ate this story up: It had sports and sex. What a combination.
This must have driven George Steinbrenner crazy. Only 43 years old, and apparently at the peak of his business career, he had bought the Yankees from CBS just 2 months earlier. He wanted to rebuild the organization in what he perceived to be his own image: Straitlaced, almost military, very businesslike, and successful.
What's more, he wanted them to win and -- equally important to him, because he wanted to fill the seats -- to make headlines, to take attention away from the New York Mets. The old Yankee dynasty had collapsed after the 1964 season, and fans had stopped going to the bad neighborhood that Yankee Stadium was in, because, without the winning, and with superstar Mickey Mantle retired, there was no more reason to go to the South Bronx.
In contrast, the Mets had a new stadium in a parking lot in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, so there was no neighborhood at all, and had won a "miracle" World Series in 1969, and still had most of the players on that team. Indeed, the Mets would win another Pennant in 1973.
The Mets were making headlines by winning and providing fun for their fans. The Yankees were making a totally different kind of headline. Now, they were seen as a team of perverts, even though it was only 2 players involved. But Peterson was 1 of their top 2 pitchers, along with Mel Stottlemyre. He had won 20 games in 1970, and 17 in 1969 and 1972. He led the American League in WHIP (Walks + Hits, divided by Innings Pitched) twice. Kekich, on the other hand, was a journeyman: He'd gone 10-9 in 1971, but 10-13 in 1972, and he was never even that good again.
Despite Peterson and Kekich getting booed in just about every AL ballpark, including Yankee Stadium, the '73 Yankees stayed in the AL Eastern Division race through August, then tailed off, and the Baltimore Orioles won the Division, then lost the AL Championship Series to the Oakland Athletics, who then beat the Mets in the World Series -- thanks in large part to 3 players that Steinbrenner would eventually acquire for the Yankees: Slugging outfielder Reggie Jackson, and pitchers Jim "Catfish" Hunter and Ken Holtzman.
Kekich wasn't there for most of that: On June 12, Steinbrenner had him traded to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Lowell Palmer, then stuck in the minors with a 3-13 career major league record. He ended up never throwing a pitch for the Yankees.
On April 26, 1974, the Yankees traded Peterson, Fred Beene, Tom Buskey and Steve Kline, all pitchers, to the Indians for 1st baseman Chris Chambliss, and pitchers Dick Tidrow and Cecil Upshaw. They traded 1/3rd of their pitching staff for Chambliss, a former AL Rookie of the Year, and 2 pitchers nobody had ever heard of. With Watergate's Saturday Night Massacre having happened just 6 months earlier, this trade became known as the Friday Night Massacre, and was very unpopular at the time, both in the clubhouse and in the stands.
But it was a great trade for the Yankees. As one observer wrote, it "broke up the country club." Upshaw never did much for them, but Tidrow became a key pitcher, both starting and relieving, on the team that would win 3 straight Pennants from 1976 to 1978. And Chambliss had both a Gold Glove and a power bat, hitting the home run that clinched the 1976 Pennant.
Peterson went 14-8 for the Indians in 1975, but pitched only 1 more season and change in the majors, due to a shoulder injury. He would finish his career at 133-131, pitching mostly for bad Yankee teams. His career WHIP was 1.191, and he led the American League in that category twice. Kekich was taken by the expansion Seattle Mariners, and threw the 1st complete-game victory in franchise history. That was it for him, as he finished 39-51.
And what about the swap? Well, Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson's relationship suffered, probably due to the other swap, the one where he was sent to Cleveland. He eventually found happiness by marrying a nurse. As of March 5, 2023, he and his wife were living outside Albuquerque, New Mexico.
But Fritz Peterson and his wife, formerly known as Susanne Kekich, stayed together. In 2013, on the 40th Anniversary, he told a reporter, "It's a love story. It wasn't anything dirty. I could not be happier with anybody in the world." He wrote 3 books about his time with the Yankees, and, with some irony, became an evangelical Christian (as did Susanne), working with Baseball Chapel.
In 2018, Peterson announced that he had Alzheimer's disease, and was withdrawing from public life. In March 2021, with assistance from his daughter Lindsay, he said on his Facebook page that he had forgotten how to use a computer. But Lindsay said that he was "having a blast" hearing from fans. (UPDATE: He died on October 19, 2023, although it wasn't publicly announced for another 6 months, until April 12, 2024.)
Since 2015, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have been trying to get a movie made about the Yankee Wife-Swap. Of course: They're Boston Red Sox fans, trying to make the Yankees look bad. Let the record show that, in 1973, the Sox didn't get close to making the Playoffs, either, finishing 8 games behind the Orioles.
