Fritz Peterson, who was a stalwart pitcher for the ineffective Yankees in the late 1960s and early 1970s but whose enduring fame owed more to one of baseball’s most infamous acts — his wife swapping with a teammate — has died at his home. in Winona, Minnesota. He was 81.
Julie Wimbish, a representative of the Winona County Civil Registry Department, confirmed Tuesday that Peterson died of lung cancer on October 19, 2023. His death was initially announced Friday by Northern Illinois University, Peterson’s alma mater, and by the Yankees, but neither announcement stated when or where he died or what the cause of death was.
Peterson was previously treated for prostate cancer and in 2018, he announced in an interview with The New York Post and in a Facebook post that he had Alzheimer’s disease.
Peterson had the misfortune to join the Yankees in 1966, when the team finished last in a 10-team American League, near the start of one of the most miserable periods in team history. During his eight full seasons in New York, the Yankees never finished higher than second place and managed to win more than they lost just four times. Mickey Mantle, the last vestige of continued Yankee glory, retired; attendance in the Bronx fell to its lowest level since World War II, just before George Steinbrenner and other investors bought the team from CBS, which sold it at a loss for $10 million, essentially a pittance.
In this bleak era, Peterson was a guiding light. Sharing the top of the rotation with another hapless Yankee, Mel Stottlemyre (who should have at least pitched for the 1964 pennant-winning squad), Peterson won 109 games, including 20 in 1970, when he made his only All-Star team . and averaged more than 17 wins over a four-year period from 1969 to 1972.
As a lefty, he didn’t overpower hitters. But he changed the speed effectively, using a variation on a change called a palm ball, and he had excellent control. He had the fewest walks per nine innings in the American League for five straight seasons. Over his career, he averaged just 1.7 walks per game.
He was also known as a joker who enjoyed the childishness that flourished in the locker room. While traveling with the Yankees, he shared time with Jim Bouton, the pitcher and baseball iconoclast who would later become best known for his memoir “Ball Four.” The book undermined their friendship, but before that they were partners in Clubhouse mischief; they once filled their hair-dryer, toupee-wearing teammate Joe Pepitone, with talcum powder.
Peterson’s own memoir, “Mickey Mantle Is Going to Heaven” (2009), is one of the stranger artifacts of baseball literature. A combination of storytelling — from the ballpark and from Peterson’s winding path toward Christian evangelism — it ends several chapters with speculation about which of Peterson’s former teammates would go to heaven (Mantle and Bobby Murcer) and which would not (Bouton).
But none of Peterson’s on-field exploits or off-field eccentricities proved as memorable as the revelation, in March 1973, that he and another Yankee pitcher, Mike Kekich, were living in each other’s house with each other’s wives and children. As a headline in The Daily News declared, “2 Yank Pitchers Swap Wives: Peterson, Kekich Throw Change-Ups.”
The two men, who each had two young children, had known each other since 1969, after Kekich was traded to the Yankees by the Los Angeles Dodgers. They had become good friends, had met each other’s wives, and in the summer of 1972 they discussed the obvious fact that Peterson and Susanne Kekich had fallen in love, as had Kekich and Marilyn Peterson.
Their solution was for the men to switch not only wives but also families, with the Kekiches’ daughters, Kristen, 5, and Reagan, 2, joining their mother at the Petersons’ home, and the sons of the Petersons, Gregg, 5, and Eric. 2, moving in with Kekich. In interviews at the time, the couples both said the so-called scandal was hardly scandalous. “It wasn’t a wife swap,” Kekich said. “It was a life change. We don’t say we’re right, and everyone else who thinks we’re wrong is wrong. It’s just how we felt.”
Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson’s relationship dissolved shortly after it became public. Fritz Peterson and Susanne Kekich married in 1974 and remained so. She survives him. (Full information on survivors was not immediately available.)
Fritz Peterson was born as Fred Ingels Peterson in Chicago on February 8, 1942, the eldest of three children of Fred and Annette (Ingels) Peterson. His father was a switchboard technician for the local telephone company; his mother supervised the household.
The family lived for a while in Crystal Lake, Ill., northwest of Chicago, and Fred attended high school in Arlington Heights, Ill., where he played field hockey and baseball. He attended Northern Illinois University, where he excelled as a pitcher, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1965, two years after signing with the Yankees and playing the first of three minor league seasons.
On April 15, 1966, in his major league debut, Peterson led the Yankees to their first victory of the season, a win over the Baltimore Orioles.
He went 12-11 in his rookie year for a team whose dismal 70-89-1 record. The following offseason, 1972-73, as Peterson and Kekich’s marriages became entangled, Peterson worked as a radio commentator for the New York Raiders of the short-lived World Hockey Association. That winter, the Yankees were purchased by Steinbrenner, a businessman who insisted that his players represent the team in a respectable manner.
After the family exchange, Kekich was traded to Cleveland in June, and Peterson was booed by fans throughout 1973 before being shipped in April 1974, also to Cleveland.
He spent just over two seasons there, ending his career in 1976 with a brief stint with the Texas Rangers. His overall won-lost record was 133-131, with an earned run average of 3.30.
In his post-baseball career, Peterson was an insurance agent and blackjack dealer and wrote two other books: “The Art of De-Conditioning: Eating Your Way to Heaven,” a satire on diet and exercise regimens, and “When the Yankees Were on the “Fritz”: Revisiting the “Horace Clarke Era,” a reference to the infielder who came to represent the mediocre Yankee teams that Peterson played on.
It was also Peterson’s time.
