It’s 50th anniversary of Yankees’ most insane swap ever

The anniversary passed quietly. There is no better team in all of professional sports than the Yankees when it comes to honoring and celebrating their history. And why wouldn’t they? Theirs is a history worth honoring, and celebrating, and applauding.

The year 2023 will mark several prominent anniversaries in team history: 100 years since the first World Series champion. Seventy years since the 1953 team won the fifth of five straight World Series, something no team (other than the 1936-39 Yankees) has ever come close to matching. Forty-five years since the epic 1978 pennant race.

And, of course, 25 years since the 1998 team that won 125 games and has taken a rightful place in the paragraph discussing the greatest teams of all time. The Yankees will spend a lot of time properly commemorating that team. Yankees fans and history buffs will surely do the same for the others.

This week, the 50th anniversary passed of another — shall we say — “interesting” milestone in Yankees history. None of the principals was invited to Steinbrenner Field to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. There were no speeches. There are only a few books that take a close look at the 1973 Yankees, and those that do always pause in early March.
That’s when Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich engaged in the most infamous trade in baseball history. They traded their lives. Literally. They swapped wives, they exchanged pets, they essentially traded families. It was perhaps the single most 1973 thing that happened in 1973.

All of it came to light — and to the back page — 50 years ago this week.

“SWITCH HAS YANKEES MIXED UP, TOO” blared the lead story in The Post’s sports section on March 7, and the comments contained therein are … well, priceless gems of the time.

“Everyone knows we’re a bunch of crazy guys,” Thurman Munson told Post reporter Sheila Moran.

“I was very shocked,” Ron Blomberg said. “I never heard of something like this before except reading books.”

“Nothing surprises me,” Sparky Lyle said.

There was a moment a few years ago when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon made a serious run at getting a movie made about the Peterson-Kekich swap, but they grew out of the roles before anything developed. That would’ve been something, a couple of notable Red Sox fans exploring that particularly sordid moment in Yankees history.

What’s as much a product of those free-love times, however, and how they differ from today is this: All concerned confirm that this all was hatched almost a year earlier, on July 15, 1972. That day, the Yankees (and Peterson) dropped a 6-2 game to the Oakland A’s at Yankee Stadium in front of 10,400 fans.

That night, Fritz and Marilyn Peterson and Mike and Susanne Kekich joined Ron Swoboda and his wife, Cecilia and a few others for a small dinner party at the Dobbs Ferry home of longtime Post baseball writer Maury Allen. It was, by all accounts, a fun night, which broke up around 2 in the morning.

By 3, Maury and his wife, Janet, had cleaned up and were headed for bed when Maury looked out the window and noticed the Petersons and the Kekiches were still there, talking in front of their cars.

“We remarked about it and went to bed,” Allen later wrote in his Yankees-themed book, “All Roads Lead to October.” “These are ballplayers, remember, different from you and me.”

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I have never had Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo over to my house for a barbecue. They’re all welcome; I doubt they’d come. Maybe the Yankees started frowning on sportswriter parties on July 15, 1972.)

The rest, as they say, would’ve broken the internet if the internet had been invented in 1973. All thanks to a party thrown by a Postie. I really would’ve liked the cameo role of Maury in that Damon-Affleck flick (though maybe, on further review, it was a meaty enough role to draw Leo instead).

The new Kekiches, alas, didn’t survive as a couple, though the Petersons still do. Both were soon exiled to Cleveland. It’s a funny enough tale and compounded greatly when you consider it was the first big story that broke under the stewardship of new Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

“It would not get any less entertaining over the next quarter century or so,” Allen wrote.

Vac’s Whack

I’m just going to say it: Though it is kind of Joe Namath to offer up No. 12 if Aaron Rodgers comes here … no. Just no.

A couple of preorder suggestions for you — you can thank me later when Jack Curry’s “The 1998 Yankees” is released in May and Gary Myers’ “Once a Giant” comes out in September.

A team from Wisconsin versus a team from Ohio for the Big East title. Dave Gavitt is weeping in his beer somewhere.

I remember when I was a kid watching the Giants and Jets hopelessly punt away the 1970s, and my father would always lament, “Why can’t we ever have a coach like Bud Grant?” Godspeed to a purple pillar of the NFL.

Whack Back at Vac

Steve Giegerich: I think it would be a perfect marriage for The Bronx Zoo to be the first patch on Yankees uniforms. For the Yankees: a wink and a nod to their history. For the zoo: the obvious promotional value. For me? Seeing my favorite Bronx institutions get together (if only I could get the Botanical Gardens involved too!)

Vac: Sign me up for this!

Sam Tee: I just don’t understand what the Zach Wilson plan is. Publicly, the team is committed to him, and yet they’re chasing QBs who could play two to three years [or] much longer. Do you see Wilson on this team in two years?

Vac: In a word: no.

@Brinks4eva: After dealing what we’ve had to deal with over the last 20+ years as St. John’s fans I’d sell my soul twice for Rick Pitino.

@MikeVacc: For better or worse, good we are talking about the Johnnies again.

Michael Keneski: Since Zion Williamson can’t stay on the floor and Ja Morant can’t stay out of self-inflicted trouble, maybe the Knicks got the right guy in RJ Barrett back in 2019?

Vac: I’m delighted to see I’m not the only person who’s been thinking this.