[Rev. Jim Osborne]

Chalk up another victory for Jesus! Former New York Yankees pitcher Fritz Peterson, who once engaged in wife-swapping with his teammate, and led a sinful life, repented his sins and turned his life over to Jesus. Let us all pray for Brother Fritz and praise Jesus for his redemption. His inspiring story should be read by all sinners engaging in disgusting sexual immorality as an example that God does allow U-Turns so that you can be one of the few people to go to Heaven while the rest of humanity burns in Hell for eternity.

Source: AOL News

HOBOKEN, N.J. (Oct. 8) -- Fritz Peterson is pretty sure he isn't going to hell, even though many sports fans remember him for just one thing -- how he met his wife, a woman he's been with for 36 years.


The former New York Yankees pitcher, now 67, figures prominently in the answer to two great sports trivia questions. The first one is this:


In 1973, which two baseball players traded their wives, their two children, and even their dogs?


Indeed, at a time when wife-swapping was a hot topic -- and a sign, perhaps, that the sexual revolution had gone too far -- Peterson and teammate Mike Kekich took the practice to a whole new level.

The two southpaws moved into each other's homes and essentially exchanged living situations, much to the shock of the baseball world. As one Yankee official famously put it, "We might have to call off Family Day."
The controversy has long since slipped off the sports pages. But even now, more than three decades later, it overshadows Peterson's life.


"Hey, I've got a sense of humor. But it's still hard for me to laugh about some of it," Peterson said at a restaurant in Hoboken. He was just a few miles from Yankee Stadium, where he was cheered as an All-Star and, later, booed relentlessly as baseball's most notorious swinger.


In the years since, Peterson has rarely talked about his private life. He married the former Susan Kekich, retired from baseball in '76, became an evangelical Christian, and ended up trying to support two households, because his ex-wife and Mike Kekich didn't stay together very long.

Now, however, Peterson has something to say. He's battling prostate cancer and wants to set the record straight. His memoir, "Mickey Mantle Is Going to Heaven" (Outskirts Press), mixes baseball with reflections on what he calls the "lake of fire" that separates some of us from our place with the Almighty in that great ballpark in the sky.

"I'm not scared of death," Peterson said. "I always thought it would be hilarious to rent a coffin and show up in it at one of those fan fests where the players sign autographs."

What bothers him is how some in the media distorted the story of how he became involved with his beloved.

"Let’s just call them 'fuzzy facts,'" Peterson said. "Some sports writers made it out like the four of us were engaged in some bizarre sex party. It was more like Mike and I were friends, and both our marriages fell apart at the same time. There was nothing dirty about it.

"It was a messy situation. But life is often messy."

Of course, everyone has a way of dealing with the past. Peterson's wife asked him not to use her name in the book. "She wants her privacy," he said. "As you can imagine, the publicity was hard on her.

"She tried to read it but had to stop by chapter three."

Peterson speaks of his spouse with reverence. They raised three children together in addition to those from their previous marriages, and she has helped him through various crises.

When he was arrested in 1995 for driving while intoxicated, she took a picture of him emerging from a Chicago jail and had it framed -- to remind him of what he'd done.

A Rising Star on a Terrible Team


When Yankee scouts signed Peterson in 1963, he was living a dream. The kid from Oak Park, Ill., was set to pitch for the most famous team in sports history.

But by the time he made his way through the minor leagues, in 1966, Mickey Mantle could barely run. Whitey Ford suffered from circulation problems in his pitching arm. And the team had become the laughingstock of the American League.

"We were mediocre at best, pathetic at worst," Peterson said of his eight-year stint with the club.

"It was still great. Being on a bad Yankee team is still way better than playing for any Met team."

Peterson even managed to stand out, winning 20 games in 1970, and earning a spot on the All-Star team.

Yet just when the Yankees were putting together another championship quality team -- with stars like Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles, Bobby Murcer and Sparky Lyle -- news of the Peterson-Kekich love quadrangle harpooned his career.

"I can't tell you what it was like the first time I went out on the field, after the news broke," he said. "Nothing could prepare me for that."

As a counterpoint, Peterson compares that moment to the tear-jerking scene in Lou Gehrig's life, as it was depicted in the 1942 film classic "Pride of the Yankees."

Gehrig (as portrayed by Gary Cooper) stands before a packed stadium, trembling from the rare disease that would soon take his life. He steps to the microphone at home plate and the words reverberate through every teary fan: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

"For me, it was a Lou Gehrig moment in complete reverse," Peterson said.

"The entire stadium rose when they heard my name, and they booed and yelled with an anger I can still recall.

"And I said to myself, 'Today, I consider myself the unluckiest man on the face of the earth.'"
'If I Could Be Saved, Anyone Could Be'


Peterson blames arm trouble -- not razzing from the bleachers -- for his career's quick demise. By the spring of '74, the Yankees had traded away both him and Kekich.

Two years later, he was out of baseball. And unfortunately, that was just before the age of free agency, when baseball salaries exploded.

In the years since, he's worked a series of sales jobs that he hated. He much preferred his stints as a blackjack dealer.

"I can no longer condone gambling because of my religious beliefs," he said. "But those days were fun."

Peterson talks religion, but he still enjoys looking back on his locker room shenanigans, back when he was one of the game's most celebrated practical jokers.

The most unlikely turn in his post-baseball career came in 1979, when he joined Baseball Chapel -- an outreach ministry at ballparks throughout the country.

At one "mini sermon" in Milwaukee, Peterson told a congregation, "If I could be saved, anyone could be."

How much has the wife-swapping controversy hung over his career?

Consider this: Just before the old Yankee Stadium closed last summer,

ESPN issued this trivia question:

Which pitcher had the all-time lowest ERA at Yankee Stadium?

"Even I was surprised to find out that the answer was me," Peterson said.
"I guess people remember me for something else."

Whitey Ford, the Hall of Fame pitcher with the second lowest all-time ERA in Yankee Stadium history, might have guessed the right answer.

In a signed photo in Peterson's book, Ford scrawled this message to his old teammate: "If only you would have listened to me."