MEMO TO TALK HOSTS: TELL US THE REST OF THE STORY! - MIKE IN DA - MAY 24, 2010

TELL US THE REST OF THE STORY!

Written by: Astro Mike Ganis aka Mike In DA

Date Posted: 05-24-2010

Your dentist occasionally doesn’t feel up to sterilizing his or her instruments? So what. Once in a while your auto mechanic only says he replaced the brake pads? He’s entitled. Sometimes, a local sports talk host doesn't finish what he started. Hey, it's his show; he can do what he wants. Okay, so these guys all got lazy this time.

One of my biggest complaints with many of our local sports talk hosts, especially the younger ones, is that they may bring up a topic, incident, story, etc., and then for some reason, never follow up on it to conclusion, especially with the Internet right in front of them. They get lazy. This happens a lot, but one story that sticks out, is one that I am very familiar with, as it deals with the Yankees.

On the Hoffy-Nuno Show on KGOW 1560 three Mondays ago, David mentioned that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both Boston Red Sox fans, were reuniting in front of the cameras again in the near future, as they attempt to bring to the movie screen the story of two former New York Yankee baseball players (Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich) who swapped wives.

Damon and Affleck have had their eye on the project for some time, with various things having stopped it from coming together. But “The Trade” now looks set to happen, as the pair will reform their production company and release the flick through Warner Bros. Affleck will direct and star as Peterson with Damon will have the Kekich role.

(Paul Harvey was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Network who passed away last year at age 91. He broadcast “News and Comment” on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon ET on Saturdays, as well as his famous, “The Rest of the Story” segments, in which he would start a story or anecdote and would tell us the “rest of the story” after the commercial.)

After mentioning the flick that is expected to be released in 2012, David dropped the ball and never told us “the rest of the story” of the wife swapping after “teasing” the audience, many of whom may not have been familiar with the story, since it happened almost four decades ago.

Luckily for David, co-host Hoffy and Richard Justice, who was that day's in-studio guest, knew of the incident and Justice even knew Kekich's wife's first name. But nobody was able to tell us what happened to the players' careers after that. It would have been nice if David had told the whole story, not just the dribs and drabs we got from Hoffy and Richard. The story follows.

Peterson was a very good pitcher for some not so good Yankee teams, according to Yankee standards, from 1966-74. However, he is better remembered today for swapping families with teammate Kekich, an arrangement the pair announced at spring training in March 1973. Peterson and Kekich had been inseparable friends since 1969; both families lived in New Jersey, their children were about the same age, and often the families would hang out or go on vacations together.

The affair began in 1972, when the two couples joked on a double date about wife swapping, something that caught on in some uninhibited circles during the early 1970s. According to the story, the first swap took place that summer, after a party at the home of a New York sportswriter.

They decided that they would one day trade wives, children, and even dogs and the couples made the changes official in October 1972; Kekich moving in with Marilyn Peterson and Peterson with Susanne Kekich, but no word leaked out until spring training of 1973. There were jokes galore about the swap, including the one that the Yanks might have to call off "Family Day" that season.

The trade worked out better for Peterson than it did for Kekich, as Peterson is still married to the former Susanne Kekich, with whom he has had four children. They got married in 1974. Kekich and Marilyn Peterson did not last long. By year-end 1973, Mike and Marilyn went their own ways.

Kekich was traded to the Cleveland Indians shortly after the story broke in 1973. Peterson's pitching suffered in 1973 and 1974 after this "deal", and he was booed in nearly every American League ballpark afterwards. In April 1974, the Yankees traded him to Cleveland, also, but Kekich had already moved on to a pitching job in Japan to get away from the public's wrath for a year. Kekich later remarried and now lives outside Alberquerque, NM.

Later, Peterson and Susanne Kekich lived outside Chicago, where he worked as a blackjack dealer at a casino. Peterson is also notable for his appearances in Jim Bouton's bestselling 1970 book, “Ball Four”, where he was portrayed as one of the few major leaguers and former Yankees who had a positive view of Bouton. Peterson released his first book "Mickey Mantle is Going To Heaven" last year and it’s terrific.

I predict the flick will be a bomb, unless they make a comedy out of it.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Astro Mike Ganis aka Mike In DA

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