Kekich and Peterson family swap

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kekich and Peterson family swap between the two pitchers of the New York Yankees baseball club , Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson, took place in late 1972. It was picked up by the United States media in the spring of 1973 and became a scandal for the New York Yankees and the most important issue in baseball in 1973. It received worldwide attention and is counted among the processes that were previously largely scandal-free and family-friendly baseball sport in the 1970s.

history

Fritz Peterson (front row, far left, with glasses) on the Arlington High School baseball team during his senior year there

exchange

Fritz Peterson had been under contract with the New York Yankees since 1966. Mike Kekich joined the Yankees from the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1969 and became friends with Peterson upon arrival. The two players became close confidante in the following years and both families spent their free time together. Both couples had been married since the mid-1960s and each had two children.

After going to the cinema together in the summer of 1972, the two couples discussed a possible partner swap. At a party held a short time later by sports journalist Maury Allen on July 15, 1972, the two women agreed that they would stay with each other's husbands. By October 1972, the men had swapped their rented houses and moved in with the other's family. Part of the exchange was taking over the children, who were to stay with the mothers, and the dogs - a terrier for the Kekichs and a poodle for the Petersons. Kekich briefed the Yankees' player manager, Lee MacPhail , of the incident. Until March 1973 only Mel Stottlemyre knew of the other players about the exchange.

Announcement

Until the spring of 1973, nothing was known of the exchange. This is likely due to an instruction from club owner George Steinbrenner . Now that information leaked out, it was decided to officially inform the press. At the Yankees' spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale , the two players held separate press conferences on March 4, 1973. Kekich presented himself to journalists at 10 a.m., Peterson at 4 p.m. It was important to both players not to explain the swap as a "sex thing", but as a life decision in the interests of everyone:

"We didn't swap wives - we swapped lives."

"We didn't trade women - we traded lives."

- Mike Kekich, from: The Washington Times

resonance

The news was a sensation in North America, which at the time was still shamefully reticent about such topics. The media were no longer willing to ignore private affairs and other indiscretions in sports: "The Kekich-Peterson wife swap became a national story." The fame of the New York baseball club contributed to the rapid spread of the news. The major newspapers in the country took the subject on the front pages.

The swap became a moral scandal for the Yankees and had an impact on the game of baseball across the country. Influential sports journalists such as Milton Richman (1922–1968) from United Press International , Sal Marchiano from WABC-TV ( American Broadcasting Company ) or Sheila Moran from the New York Post traveled to the press conferences and reported the incident immediately. Well-known sports journalist for the New York Daily News , Dick Young, condemned the swap as immoral. The presenter Paul Harvey also reported on the day of the announcement in his popular news program on ABC Radio .

As a result, the television stations ABC and NBC as well as the team of 60 Minutes were present and reported at the spring training . The Time Magazine ( "Switch Partners") and Newsweek ran stories.

Major League Baseball Chairman at the time , Bowie Kuhn , was appalled by the incident but saw no way to intervene. Kuhn later stated that he had received more letters in the matter than with the controversially discussed introduction of the designated hitter rule. One of the few officials who saw the swap as a private matter and saw no impact on the Yankees' game was club manager Ralph Houk . Most of the teammates rejected the exchange for ethical reasons, but also viewed the process as not affecting the club.

Later development

Kekich and his new partner Marylin separated just a few weeks after the press conference on March 4, 1973. Marylin then moved to New Jersey with her two sons and later remarried. A short time later, Kekich was sold by the Yankees to the Cleveland Indians , in succession he played in rapid succession for the Japanese Hokkaidō Nippon Ham Fighters , the Texas Rangers and the Seattle Mariners . According to his own statement, his further career as a baseball player suffered from the scandal. In 1977 his playing career ended and he worked as an insurance appraiser. He later remarried and has a daughter from this marriage.

Kekich later stated that the agreement between the two players that the swap should be reversed if either side was dissatisfied was broken by Peterson after the failure of the Kekich / Marylin relationship. Peterson replied that this arrangement only lasted until December 14, 1972. At this point, the new families had lived together for two months and after a brief period of returning to the old family, everyone involved made a final decision.

The relationship between Peterson and Kekich's ex-wife was more stable. The couple married in 1974 and stayed together. As with Kekich, Peterson's athletic performance was affected by the negative criticism of the swap; he could no longer build on earlier successes. After finishing his baseball career in 1976, he worked as an insurance broker, Bible seller, and teacher. The couple had four children together.

reception

media

The process of 1973 is a topic in US and foreign media to this day: In his book The 100 Greatest Days in New York Sports , Stuart Miller listed the exchange of women in fourth place on the negative list "Bad Behavior on the Road". In September 2009, the New York Times reviewed Peterson's book, Mickey Mantle Is Going To Heaven (Outskirts Press), which deals with swapping women.

David Fischer recorded the scandal in his 2012 book 100 Things Yankees Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die . ESPN put the swap in sixth place on the “Shocking moments in baseball history” list. The television station Fox Sports ( Fox Broadcasting Company ) also listed the swap in the list of Biggest sports sex scandals from 2012. In 2013, the scandal was then number 6 on the list of "The 50 Craziest Sex Scandals in Sports History" by Complex.com set. And also in 2013 the high-circulation Indian daily Deccan Chronicle included the process in 2013 in the list “Sex scandals that rocked the sports world”.

Music and film

The US supergroup The Baseball Project ( Peter Buck , Mike Mills , Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn and Linda Pitmon) released the song "The Ballad of Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson" on the albums Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (2008; as an online bonus track) and The Broadside Ballads (2011).

The actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck announced in 2010 that they wanted to make a film about history. As avowed fans of the Boston Red Sox , they are said to have liked the idea of ​​reliving the scandal that was unfavorable for the New York Yankees. Journalists therefore doubt whether the two film stars can muster the necessary compassion for the protagonists of the film. The two originally planned to play the main roles themselves. After other film projects had not given them time, it is now planned that their film company Pearl Street Films should produce the film together with Warner Brothers . Affleck and Damon will be producers of the film alongside Jennifer Todd . The script was written by Adam Mandel and Casey Affleck , and Jay Roach will be the director. While Peterson was accepting a production consultancy contract, Kekich threatened to sue the film.

literature

  • Frank Foster, The Family Swap: The Bizarrely True Story of Two Yankee Baseball Players Who Decided to Trade Families , ISBN 978-1-629-17326-9 , Book Caps Study Guides, 2014, in English

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Dan Epstein, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s , ISBN 978-1-429-92075-9 , Macmillan , 2010, p. 81 , in English
  2. ↑ a b Joe Capozzi, Ex-Yankee Fritz Peterson has no regrets 40 years after wife swap , January 26, 2013, Palm Beach Post , in English
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Kekich and Peterson made strangest trade in '73 , March 7, 2005, The Washington Times , (English)
  4. ↑ Tony Manfred, Meet The Wife-Swapping New York Yankees Of 1972 , June 27, 2011, Business Insider , in English
  5. ↑ Dennis D'Agostino, Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball Beat was the Best Job on the Paper , ISBN 978-1-597-97870-5 , Potomac Books ( University of Nebraska Press), 2013, in English
  6. ^ Dan Epstein, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s , ISBN 978-0-312-60754-8 , Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin's Press), New York 2010, in English
  7. ↑ a b c d Dave Anderson, The New York Times (Ed.), The New York Times Story of the Yankees: 382 Articles, Profiles and Essays from 1903 to Present , ISBN 978-1-603-76370-7 , Leventhal, 2012, p. 315 , in English
  8. ↑ Major League swingers: NY Yankees Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich swap families, 1972 , April 9, 2013, Dangerousminds.net , in English
  9. ^ A b c Matthew Silverman, Swinging '73: Baseball's Wildest Season , ISBN 978-0-762-79323-5 , Rowman & Littlefield , 2013, pp. 22ff.
  10. ↑ Mike Kekich & Fritz Peterson Not Happy About Ben Affleck / Matt Damon Wife-Swap Film "The Trade" , February 25, 2011, OK! Magazine , in English
  11. ↑ John Rosengren, Hammerin 'Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid: The Year That Changed Baseball Forever, ISBN 978-1-402-23031-8 , Sourcebooks, Inc., 2008, page 25 in English
  12. ^ Frank Foster, The Family Swap: The Bizarrely True Story of Two Yankee Baseball Players Who Decided to Trade Families , see Bibliography
  13. ↑ Marty Appel, Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss , ISBN 978-1-620-40047-0 , Bloomsbury Publishing , 2012, p. 390 , in English
  14. ↑ a b Shocking moments in baseball history , Page 2 , ESPN, in English
  15. ^ Dan Fogarty: Former Player “Panic-Stricken” Over Planned Movie About Yankee Wife-Swapping. Former Player "Panic-Knitting" Over Planned Movie About Yankee Wife-Swapping. In: sportsgrid.com. Spotsgrid, February 24, 2011, accessed on August 7, 2015 (English): “Well, talk about sports invading the front pages, this story was a beaut. It sold papers like crazy and became the subject of steady bar fodder. "
  16. ^ Roger Rubin and David Lennon, The Great New York Sports Debate: Two New York Sportswriters Go Head-to-Head on the 50 Most Heated Questions , ISBN 978-1-101-21331-5 , Penguin Books , 2006, p. 68 u. 69
  17. ↑ Jean Hastings Ardell, Breaking Into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime , ISBN 978-0-809-32627-3 , Southern Illinois University Press, 2005, p 203
  18. ^ Ron Blomberg and Dan Schlossberg, Designated Hebrew: The Ron Blomberg Story , ISBN 978-1-582-61987-3 , Sports Publishing, 2006, p. 128 , in English
  19. ↑ Randy Jones and Mark Bego, Macho Man: The Disco Era and Gay America's "Coming Out" , ISBN 978-0-275-99962-9 , ABC-CLIO, 2009, p. 52 , in English
  20. ↑ Christopher Devine, Thurman Munson: A Baseball Biography , ISBN 978-0-786-48334-1 , McFarland, 2001, p. 70
  21. ↑ a b Chris Smith, Yankee-Panky , Jan. 14, 1991, New York Journal , p. 24
  22. ↑ Fran Zimniuch, Going, Going, Gone !: The Art of the Trade in Major League Baseball , ISBN 978-1-461-70316-7 , Taylor Trade Publishing, 2008 S. 176
  23. ↑ Stuart Miller, The Yankees take up wife-swapping, March 5, 1973 , ISBN 978-0-618-57480-3 , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt , 2006, pp. 494 f.
  24. ↑ Joe Lapointe, In His Book, Fritz Peterson Discusses Pranks, Teammates and Swapping Wives , September 18, 2009, The New York Times , p. B15 (New York edition), in English
  25. ↑ David Fischer, 100 Things Yankees Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die ( Make sense of the Peterson-Kekich Swap ), ISBN 978-1-60078-669-3 , Triumph Books, 2012, p. 169 , in English
  26. ↑ Biggest sports sex scandals , January 26, 2012, Fox Sports , in English
  27. ↑ Sean Evans and Gus Turner, The 50 Craziest Sex Scandals in Sports History , July 3, 2013, Complex.com , in English
  28. ↑ Sajal K Patra , Sex scandals that rocked the sports world ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archives.deccanchronicle.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 8, 2013, Deccan Chronicle (online edition), in English
  29. ^ The Baseball Project , baseball-reference.com , in English
  30. ↑ Stephen Smith, Mike Kekich, ex-Yankee, sweats wife-swap film , March 2, 2011, CBS News , in English
  31. ^ Dean Praetorius, Mike Kekich And Fritz Peterson: The Story Behind "The Trade" , February 25, 2011, The Huffington Post , in English
  32. ↑ Tamara Abraham, 'We didn't just swap wives, we swapped lives': How Yankees stars traded families in scandal that rocked Seventies baseball , June 21, 2011, online edition of the Daily Mail , in English
  33. ↑ Faithful Yankees Haters to Make a Movie About Yankees Wife-Swap Scandal , April 9, 2015, Boston Magazine , in English
  34. ↑ Adam Chitwood, Jay Roach in Talks to Direct Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's Yankees Wife Swap Film The Trade , May 8, 2014, collider.com , in English
  35. ↑ Mark Shanahan, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon stopped pursuing wife swap movie , April 10, 2015 The Boston Globe , in English