Behind the Scenes of the Yankee Wife-Swap Scandal (PTFO Vault)

Summary

Behind the Scenes of the Yankee Wife-Swap Scandal

Podcast: Pablo Torre Finds Out
Episode: Behind the Scenes of the Yankee Wife-Swap Scandal (PTFO Vault)
Air Date: July 25, 2025
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests: Dave Mandel (TV writer/producer), Peter Melman (writer), Marty Appel (Yankees historian/former PR), Rick Dempsey (former Yankees catcher), archival audio from Fritz Peterson, Mike Kekich

Episode Overview

In this episode, Pablo Torre takes listeners on a deep-dive investigation into one of the strangest, most sensational episodes in major league baseball—and sports—history: the 1973 “Yankee wife-swap” scandal. Through interviews and storytelling with curiosity correspondents and insiders, Pablo unpacks the full, true story of how two New York Yankees pitchers—Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich—traded not only wives, but their entire families, forever changing their lives and baseball gossip. The episode blends journalism, Hollywood, and surprising heart, punctuated by the revelation of Peterson’s recent death.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing the Oddest Trade in Sports (00:00–05:07)

• Pablo Torre confides that today's episode is a reporter's odyssey—“a story that actually feels like it was taken from the bizarro universe of sports.”
• Guest intro: Dave Mandel (writer for Seinfeld, Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm), who has researched and scripted a film about the Yankees’ wife-swap story.
• Mandel recounts how he first stumbled onto the saga via a baseball card coffee table book in the Seinfeld writers’ room (05:07–06:06).

“At some point or another, I land on a page that basically has a picture of Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson’s cards. And I had never heard the story.”
— Dave Mandel, 06:01

2. The Unfolding of the Swap (06:06–12:37)

• The 1973 Yankees were a struggling team—and suddenly made history with an off-field swap.
• Both couples—Petersons (Fritz & Marilyn) and Kekiches (Mike & Susan)—were close friends, both with two young children.
• At a party in 1972, the couples “swapped” rides home; this evolved into a relationship trade, not just a wife-swap.
• Details: The swap included entire households—kids, pets, even the houses, not just the spouses.

“So no, they weren’t swapping wives... The Petersons and the Kekiches were actually swapping husbands. The children, their pets, their furniture, their houses would remain as it was... there was just a matter of, you know, a pitching change.”
— Pablo Torre, 11:24

3. Clubhouse Fallout and Public Outcry (12:37–16:56)

• Rick Dempsey, then-Yankees catcher, recalls the bombshell clubhouse meeting where players were told to keep quiet.
  • “They called a meeting in the clubhouse to talk about it... By that time, the owner, George Steinbrenner, had asked everybody to just kind of shy away from it.” (13:55)
• Marty Appel, Yankees PR at the time, describes the chaos and scramble for press management.
  • No press release, just two separate, unprecedented press conferences for Kekich and Peterson on the same day (14:50).
• The tabloids and late-night hosts (Johnny Carson, Bob Hope) feasted on the story, making it a national punchline.

“It was like a five-day story in the New York tabloids front page... Johnny Carson makes his first joke about it.”
— Marty Appel, 15:44

4. Winners and Losers: Unexpected Consequences (16:56–21:38)

• Peterson and Susan Kekich flourished as a couple, marrying in 1974 and remaining together for 50 years.
• Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson quickly regretted the swap and tried to undo it, but it was too late; “buyers’ remorse” set in.
• Relationships dissolved and tensions mounted on the team; Yankees eventually traded the underperforming Kekich to Cleveland.

“Within a week, it was obvious that Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson both had buyer’s remorse... They wanted this whole experiment to be over. The problem was Fritz and Susan completely disagreed.”
— Pablo Torre, 18:01

• The end of the friendship between Fritz and Mike is recounted, with sadness and regret.

“He goes no, no, I haven’t. We haven’t been in contact in years... I said, so you have any idea of what his life is like? And he said no, none.”
— Peter Melman (recalling conversation with Fritz), 23:33

5. Hollywood Tries to Make Sense of It (24:23–29:32)

• Mandel’s screenplay about the scandal, The Trade, repeatedly languished in Hollywood development—attracting interest from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (with Damon eyed for Fritz, Affleck for Kekich).
• Mandel discusses the difficulties of pitching the story as both absurd and tragic.

“There were not a lot of punchlines, so to speak. But the story itself, all the things that you and I are sort of sitting here going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it.’”
— Dave Mandel, 25:40

• Discussion of possible casting for the wives, how the scandal has been reframed as a love story for Peterson and Susan, and the lingering lack of closure for Kekich.

6. Aftermath and the True Love Story (29:32–31:27)

• The shock twist: Despite (or because of) all the chaos, Fritz Peterson and Susan Kekich went on to have a 50-year marriage.
• Marty Appel frames this as a rare, real-life American love story.

“That’s the wonderful side of the story. That’s a true love story. I mean, who goes 50 years? ... So it is maybe the greatest of all American love stories.”
— Marty Appel, 30:19

• Fritz, in archival interviews, admitted the impact on the children but affirmed the happiness he and Susan found together:

“We’ve just had so much fun, and I thank God for my new wife. We’re still partying every night. Our honeymoon never wore off, and I hope it never does.”
— Fritz Peterson, 30:54

7. Closure, Death, and a Private Ending (33:13–end)

• Pablo reveals he discovered during production that Fritz Peterson had died months earlier, and news of his death was kept private before leaking via university records.
• The episode ends with reflection: after decades of public scrutiny, some parts of the story—most notably its last chapter—remained just for the people involved.

“It was an overdue sense of privacy for an athlete whose most intimate decisions became willfully known to so many strangers all across America throughout time. And so it did feel appropriate that the real last scene in this real life love story just wasn’t for the rest of us to see.”
— Pablo Torre, 33:13

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the oddity of the swap:

  • “No, but it’s quite a thing. The Yankees now have a manager, three coaches, and a marriage counselor.” (Pulled audio, 01:31 & 16:36)

• On the mechanics of the trade:

  • “Everything else in their households... their children, their pets, their furniture, their houses would remain as it was... there was just a matter of, you know, a pitching change.” — Pablo Torre, 11:24

• On public reaction:

  • “You know, it’s going to be a strange year in baseball. The ump says, ‘Play ball,’ and everybody throws their keys into the ballpark.” — Johnny Carson, 16:48

• On the emotional fallout:

  • “There was a sadness about it because they were not approachable now as a foursome... The sadness, which wasn’t something that made its way into the newspaper, was that there were children involved here.” — Marty Appel, 21:04

• On Hollywood’s intrigue:

  • “At some point or another his brother Casey Affleck I think took a pass. That was another pass.” — Dave Mandel, 27:01

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–02:00 | Pablo’s intro and episode premise | | 02:00–05:07 | Meet Dave Mandel, Seinfeld credits, and his connection | | 06:06–12:37 | The beginning of the swap: from card collection to scandal| | 12:37–16:56 | Clubhouse meeting, media frenzy, Yankees PR debacle | | 17:28–21:38 | Fallout: couples react, buyer's remorse, friendships end | | 24:23–29:32 | Hollywood, the lost movie, and “The Trade” | | 29:32–31:27 | The Peterson/Kekich love story endures | | 33:13–end | Fritz Peterson’s death & reflection on privacy |

---

Final Reflection

The PTFO Vault episode covers not just scandal and baseball gossip, but probes how a deeply strange arrangement shaped multiple lives—sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully, always publicly. Through richly sourced journalism, humor, Hollywood tangents, and genuine empathy, Pablo Torre and his correspondents show how the “Yankee wife-swap” became one of America’s greatest misunderstood love stories. The saga ends outside the public eye, leaving listeners with the sense that sometimes, the most remarkable stories are the ones that won’t ever be fully told.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so hello, it is me, Pablo, entering, invading even your ears, because I have done something I have not done before, which is take the advice of someone who once told me that if people wish to support you financially, if they wish to support your journalism, your very strange future of journalism, meaning your newsroom, your ambitions, your desire to investigate things people don't want you to investigate, you should let them. And so I am on Substack, my [e-mail]. we'll put a link in the show notes of this episode. I have turned on paid subscriptions, and if you didn't know I have a substack, guess what? It's free. And that's still there for you. And it's worth it. But the paid subscribers who support this show and us will get legitimately cool personalized benefits to come. We will make it worth your while. We are figuring out here at PTFO our post draftkings future and, you know, more good news on that front. I hope to come. But in the meantime, Pablo show is where you sign up. Click the link in the show notes. Help support us, please. Thank you, thank you, thank you on that front. And this. This episode today is a handpicked episode from deep inside the PTFO vault that we sincerely hope you enjoy. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Unidentified Commentator]

No, but it's quite a thing. The Yankees now have a manager, three coaches, and a marriage counselor.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad. Dave Mandel. I should say that I have been on a bit of an odyssey that has led me to you. Uh, oh, well, uh. Oh, in a couple of senses that I want to explore and excavate with you. But how should I introduce you? Because there's a lot to introduce, I suppose.

[Dave Mandel]

I don't know, you know, sometimes I feel like, you know, you can kind of just go in chronological order or you can just kind of go what my, I guess, tombstone will say, which is the guy that wrote the Bizarro Jerry. Yeah, that's sort of, I think, how I'm going to. That's sort of as good as it's going to get vis a vis death. So, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so Bizarro Jerry, if you are not familiar, is one of the greatest episodes of one of the greatest television shows in American history. And Dave Mandel, longtime Seinfeld writer, was in fact responsible.

[Dave Mandel]

So he's Bizarro Jerry.

[Pablo Torre]

Bizarro Jerry?

[Dave Mandel]

Yeah, like Bizarro Superman. Superman's exact opposite who lives in the backwards Bizarro World. Up is down, down is up. He says hello when he leaves, goodbye when he arrives.

[Pablo Torre]

Shouldn't he bad bye? Isn't that the opposite of goodbye?

[Dave Mandel]

No, it's still goodbye.

[Pablo Torre]

Does he live underwater?

[Dave Mandel]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

Is he black?

[Dave Mandel]

Look, just forget the whole thing, all right?

[Pablo Torre]

But the reason today's Odyssey has brought me to Dave Mandel is not because he has written for Seinfeld and the Simpsons and Saturday Night Live and Curb youb Enthusiasm and Veep, all of which he did. The reason I'm talking to Dave Mandel is because Dave is the key to telling a story that I have been trying to report out for a very, very, very long time. A story that actually feels like it was taken from the bizarro universe of sports. An upside down world where the most insane transaction I have ever heard of actually occurred. As Matt Damon is well aware.

[Dave Mandel]

A couple of quick questions about you getting doing a production deal with Ben Affleck. Kind of going back in business again, right?

[Pablo Torre]

True or false.

[Dave Mandel]

Are you gonna make a movie together where you play wife swapping Yankees?

[Pablo Torre]

There is a. It's a true story actually, but I haven't seen a script for that one yet. But I am here to tell you that this script does exist. It never got made, but it does exist. And I know this because Dave Mandel is not just the guy who wrote it and who sent it to me. Dave Mandel is the guy who spent years researching this. And that's the part I really cared about. Because yes, as Matt Damon was alluding to just then to cbs, the story of the Yankee wife swap is a true story. It is the real life tale of two best friends. Two real life starting pitchers for the New York Yankees. My favorite named Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich. And Fritz Peterson and Mike kekich in the 1970s actually decided to switch wives. And so how is it, David Mandel, that you got involved with the story of the Yankee wife swap?

[Dave Mandel]

It's funny, it actually goes back to Seinfeld, which is Peter Melman, who was one of the longtime Seinfeld writers. He and I wrote, wrote episodes together. We wrote the backwards episode of Seinfeld. We wrote that, we co wrote that together and you know, friends, whatever, all those good things.

[Peter Melman]

I am Peter Melman, longtime sports fan and occasional writer.

[Dave Mandel]

And I used to hang out in his office and he had this wonderful book on his coffee table in his office. Like a baseball card sort of coffee table book, like history of baseball cards. So I would just pick this book up literally every time I Was in the office, like, with no agenda of any sort. And at some point or another, I land on a page that basically has a picture of Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson's cards. And I had never heard the story. I was born in 1970, so it happened obviously when I was a little kid. I'd never heard the story.

[Peter Melman]

Dave grew up in Manhattan, and I think he grew up on Scandal and, you know, so anything I could tell him, story wise, that was somewhat scandalous or, or lurid, especially lurid. He just loved it. So I, I kind of remember being excited to tell him about Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson. In 1973, the Yankees were in the eighth year of an unprecedented run of being horrible, and nobody was paying attention to them. The announcers were barely involved in the game. And all of a sudden it comes out that two pitchers on the team, two lefties, have swapped families, not just wives, they swapped their entire families.

[Dave Mandel]

And I just go, what is this? And he goes, no, no, no, it's a real story. And I kind of walked out of that, just going, holy crap, that seems like it would be a great movie. I mean, it's, it's. I mean, I know it sounds silly, but it's as simple as. Boy, that sounds like a great movie. At the time, in the 70s, there was a sense that lefties were a little kooky. So these two guys were considered within their team a little bit of characters. Kekich especially Fritz Peterson, was the more straight laced of the two. Kekich was a wilder character. There was a period of time where he was just always walking around with a tennis racket. He was kooky. So there were definitely. One of them seemed more, if you will, the straighter guy, and one was more, a little bit the devil, if you will.

[Pablo Torre]

So I need you to know that Dave's story, his reporting here, hinges on these exclusive in depth conversations that he personally had with the quieter and straighter laced Fritz Peterson. And at every turn, we've been fact checking this. I've been spending weeks doing this now confirming, for instance, that Fritz, whose wife's name was Marilyn, and Mike Kekich, whose wife's name was Susan, really were this genuine duo, this pair of best friends and road roommates who were constantly hanging out and were also both the fathers of two little kits. But one of their Yankees teammates told me that while Fritz was the better player, Mike Kekich was wilder on the mound and crucially, in romance. Mike was visibly more confident, more experienced, more aggressive in that Realm. And very late one evening in July 1972, both the Petersons and the Kekiches found themselves at a house party thrown by a sports writer for the New York Post. Because in the 70s, apparently, sports writers and athletes would actually socialize and hang out. And this is what Fritz Petersen would tell a radio show many years later about what happened that fateful night at around 2 or 3am we were all.

[Fritz Peterson]

Drinking beer and having good time hot dogs. Yeah. And it got real late, and we went out to our cars. We, Mike and I, had come in separate cars with our wives, and we happened to be parked behind each other in the street. And I said, as we walked out, I saw Marilyn and Mike walking a.

[Pablo Torre]

Little bit ahead, because, again, Mike was more aggressive, but Fritz was a good teammate.

[Fritz Peterson]

And I said, hey, why don't you, Marilyn, why don't you go at the.

[Dave Mandel]

Time your wife is Marilyn?

[Fritz Peterson]

Yes. Ride with Mike to the diner in Fort Lee where we had met right before we came. And I said, susan will go with me, and we'll just meet you back there.

[Dave Mandel]

There was this mutual decision, very both fake and yet organic, of why don't I drive your wife? And why don't you drive my wife, go off and basically, for lack of a better word, go to a malt shop and kind of go on like a very, like, 1950s date, but in a very happy, dreamy, romantic way. And Keckich and Marilyn disappear for two.

[Pablo Torre]

Hours, and then two hours later, fill in the blanks. Mike Kekich emerges with. With. With Marilyn, Fritz's wife.

[Fritz Peterson]

We just had a very good time, you know, actually innocently.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Fritz Peterson]

And the next day, we were back at the ballpark. This was a. This was a Friday. And we said, you know, that was really fun. Let's do it again.

[Dave Mandel]

There's an element almost, if memory serves, of them kind of almost like cheating behind each other's backs with each other's spouse a little bit. Then it becomes sort of more organized. Then they try and put an end to it because rumors are getting out. And then ultimately they just are like, it doesn't matter. I love her. I want to be with her. I love him. I want to be with him, vice versa.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I do need to clarify here that these two couples, these two Yankee couples, weren't just swingers. I mean, look, it wasn't just the 70s. That's not entirely what the story is about here. By Fritz's own admission, the physical electricity between his wife Marilyn, and his best friend Mike had been undeniable by this point. And Fritz Petersen, by the way, was clearly falling for Sue Kekich as well. And so by 1973, after all of these little stops and starts, these considerations, the framework of the trade, as Dave Mandel would title his screenplay, got hammered out in real life and agreed upon co signed by these four friends in equal parts. And no, they weren't swapping wives. That's, I think, still the biggest misconception about the whole deal here. The Petersons and the Kekiches were actually swapping husbands. Everything else in their households, according to the trade, their children, their pets, their furniture, their houses would remain as it was with Marilyn and Sue, there was just a matter of, you know, a pitching change.

[Rick Dempsey]

My name is Rick Dempsey. My position, I'm a catcher. I joined the Yankees as a catcher in 1972 through 76.

[Pablo Torre]

And Rick's job, in the most literal sense, was to know what Fritz and Mike were gonna throw at him.

[Rick Dempsey]

I get it. Occasionally, every couple of years, somebody will say, oh, weren't you there when Mike Catkins and Fritz Peterson were there? And I go, yeah, I was there when it all happened. It was probably the biggest news in all of baseball at that time that people would trade everything, even the dogs and the cats.

[Pablo Torre]

How did you learn that the swap was happening?

[Rick Dempsey]

Well, they called a meeting in the clubhouse to talk about it. From vaguely what I remember, they were asking us not to talk too much about it, you know, just to kind of let it go. So when people asked us, well, what do you know about it? We basically said, you know, we don't know about it. You know, we've only heard about it, what we've read about it in the papers and what the media has been talking about in the clubhouse. That's basically it. Other than that, I think by that time, the owner, George Steinbroer, had asked everybody to just kind of shy away.

[Pablo Torre]

From it, which became impossibly difficult on account of the fact that one day during spring training in 1973 in Florida, the Yankees broke the news of the trade by holding two separate press conferences, one with Mike Kekich at 10am and one with Fritz Petersen at 4pm A truly unprecedented doubleheader for the PR staffer in charge.

[Marty Appel]

I'm Marty Appel, longtime historian for the New York Yankees, originally their public relations director and television producer. And I've written a lot of books on the Yankees and their history, among other things. So now I'm reduced to kind of doing zoom interviews on the subject of the Yankees.

[Pablo Torre]

But you should probably know that Marty was 24 years old on the day in question.

[Marty Appel]

You don't have a lot of preparation for moments like this. And we didn't have a written press release that we put out at all today. You would have almost been forced to confront a room of a hundred journalists back then. There were the six or seven beat writers who were covering spring training. Some phone calls came through. But it was the era before, before even People magazine, let alone Extra and Inside Edition and all of that. It was like a five day story in the New York tabloids front page. There had been an outing the previous summer on a, on an off day where we had all gone out on a, a yacht for a cruise out in New York harbor. And the Petersons and the Keckages were in the photograph together. So that became sort of ha ha, we got a photo of them.

[Dave Mandel]

And then eventually, almost a week later, as memory serves, Johnny Carson makes his first joke about it.

[Johnny Carson]

You know, the sports writers have been saying a long time they had to do something to make baseball more interesting. And this is really it. I understand Fritz is getting Mike's wife plus a, a child to be named later.

[Pablo Torre]

Part of what my research was indicating, as I was like looking into how it was reported on at the time, is to your recollection and to Fritz Peterson's recollection at least. He's the guy who seemed to be like, hey look, this isn't that weird, right? Like this doesn't have to be that weird. He wanted to sort of normalize this despite the monologue jokes. Besides the fact that again they had swapped husbands and the dogs and the kids and the houses and the furniture, otherwise, you know, that was all going to stay the same.

[Unidentified Commentator]

No, but it's quite a thing. The Yankees now have a manager, three coaches and a marriage counselor. Now when a Yankee gets traded away, his wife stays with the team.

[Johnny Carson]

You know, it's going to be a strange year in baseball. They ump says play ball and everybody throws their keys into the ballpark.

[Pablo Torre]

So no, in other words, Fritz's plea for understanding, his big plea, plea to respect his bond with Susan as this mature decision. It failed to work on anyone. It failed to work on Bob Hope. It failed to work on Johnny Carson because of course. But the narrative around the trade did start changing pretty soon on account of a crucial plot twist. As our guy Marty recalls, what happened.

[Marty Appel]

In the immediate days after was that Fritz and Susan Kekich did hit it off, did truly love each other a lot. As for Mike, it didn't last out the week they just came to realize this was not a good idea. Let's put things back the way they were. But it was too late. You couldn't put it back the way they were. So it became bitter and terrible feelings. And that's when it became apparent that one of them was going to have to get traded.

[Pablo Torre]

Within a week, it was obvious that Mike Kegich and Marilyn Peterson both had buyer's remorse. Essentially. This was just within days of those dual press conferences and spring training. They wanted this whole experiment to be over. They both proposed undoing the trade. The problem was was that Fritz and Susan completely disagreed.

[Dave Mandel]

And ultimately, you know, I think they, they both realized, but the Peterson, Fritz and Susan especially, how unhappy they are, if you will, back with their other original spouses. And the same, the other way. But the part of it that was the interesting story was this ongoing sense, and again, vis a vis, via Fritz Peterson, that Kekich felt cheated.

[Pablo Torre]

It's incred, man. This is incredible. The idea that it starts with like the, the physical lust, the testosterone, the pheromones of Mike Kekich and Marilyn Peterson together. And they're late because they were before that diner meeting and now they are realizing, oh no, it's the other couple that is way more into this.

[Dave Mandel]

There's a sense from Marilyn of like, what have I done? Like, what about. What about my thing? But from the, from the, the, the, the Kekich side, just a real sense of like, what about me? I lost. I should, I should, I deserve more. And there's a, there's a jealousy, a weird jealousy. Not necessarily about the wife, but rather, you beat me.

[Pablo Torre]

It does feel like this is a turning point for Mike Kakich, that from there the arc of his story does proceed to get gloomier.

[Dave Mandel]

Well, yeah, I mean, the Yankees make a very quick and easy choice, which is Peterson versus Kekich, and they trade him. They trade him off to Cleveland, which as bad as the Yankees were, Cleveland was the bottom of the barrel.

[Pablo Torre]

And just to be clear, the decision to trade Mike was quick and easy simply because Fritz was the better pitcher. As we said, Fritz was a former 20 game winner, actually, and he still holds the record for the lowest ERA in the history of the old Yankee Stadium at 2.52. Mike, by the time the Yankees shipped him off to Cleveland, had an ERA of 9.2. But in every other sense, the entire transaction year, the dissolution of a best friendship, the dissolution of multiple relationships, of multiple families on multiple levels, all of that was shattering. It was, it was heartbreakingly difficult. And as crazy as all of it obviously was. PR guy Marty Appel was shocked.

[Marty Appel]

I never saw that coming. And there was a sadness about it because they were not approachable now as a foursome. You had to sort of be careful what you said and did with the four of them. The trade was inevitable because of the tension in the clubhouse. Nobody knew what to say to anybody. The sadness, which wasn't something that made its way into the newspaper. Was that there were children involved here.

[Dave Mandel]

But it does begin a long downward spiral, I guess, for Kekich. That I guess ends with him asking us to buy him a speedboat.

[Pablo Torre]

So I gotta explain the speedboat thing. Because Dave Mandel never talked to Mike Kekich. Mike Kecich had a trade proposal, it turns out, of his own. He would talk to Hollywood Dave Mandel, if Dave Mandel bought him a speedboat. Dave Mandel, regrettably, did not buy Mike a speedboat. And he never talked to him, and neither did I, despite many, many attempts to do so. What we know instead is that Mike once called this point in his career a black hole. This was the time that he got traded to Cleveland. And he then went on to play in Japan and then Mexico. He was out of the major leagues. And CBS News actually found him in Mexico in the spring of 1981. In the only clip anywhere we could find of Mike speaking.

[Johnny Carson]

Lately.

[Dave Mandel]

I've been pitching fairly miserably. In the last two games, I got pounded pretty severely. Kekich gave up eight hits.

[Pablo Torre]

This night at last check, Mike Kekich wound up in real estate. He was working and had settled down in New Mexico, actually building what is believed to be a new life totally apart from Maryland. Who had also herself found a new life apart from Mike and everyone else. She had found a new spouse. And also had no interest in talking to screenwriters like Dave or nosy reporters like me. But as for Mike Kekich's friendship with Fritz Peterson. That best friendship at the core of this whole thing. I defer now to something Fritz once said at a dinner with Dave Mandel and Peter Melman, the Seinfeld writer. Who you had met before, who introduced Dave to this entire story in the first place. And Peter remembers it like this.

[Peter Melman]

I kind of took my cue from Dave because he just. He just said stuff about the scandal, you know, like. Like they were talking about what was in the paper that day. So I remember, like, even still, I remember saying. Kind of sheepishly saying, so you and Keket sure enough, you know, like friends anymore. He goes no, no, I haven't. I haven't. We haven't been in contact in years. You know, he goes, yeah, he goes. Their relationship didn't last too long. And I remember thinking, thinking like, God, I mean, like, did Kekich think he made the biggest mistake of his life? I asked him if he still keeps in touch and he said no. I said, so you have any idea of what his life is like? And he said no, none.

[Pablo Torre]

Alright, so no, none is the sort of statement, to me that raises a fundamental question. A fundamental question about the kind of movie that Dave Mandel even wanted the trade to be. Because all of this started, let's remember, with an absurdist premise worthy of Seinfeld or Veep or SNL or Curb youb Enthusiasm.

[Dave Mandel]

You and I ever split up, let.

[Peter Melman]

Me tell you something.

[Pablo Torre]

We get a divorce.

[Marty Appel]

50. 50.

[Peter Melman]

You take whatever 50% you want, I'll take what's left.

[Dave Mandel]

No. No arguing, no negativity.

[Pablo Torre]

Are you kidding me? You think we're gonna have a nice.

[Dave Mandel]

Divorce if we ever get divorced? No way. I'm taking you for everything you have, mister. I'm taking your balls and I'm thumbtacking.

[Pablo Torre]

Them to the wall. Which is also, urologically speaking, more or less, how Dave felt about his own voyage through Hollywood with this screenplay. Because there were a series of stops and starts at Fox and Warner Bros. And. And a series of flings with would be directors from Jay Roach, who did Austin Powers and Meet the Parents. To Richard Linkletter, who directed Boyhood and Before Sunset. And so he had to pitch and defend his vision for this. How much laughter he wanted to be in this. The question of what this movie was supposed to be.

[Dave Mandel]

I guess to me, the way I sort of always thought about it was unlike, say, a show like Seinfeld or Veep or whatever, where we write jokes, we write things, we write setups to create punchlines. You know, there were not a lot of punchlines, so to speak. But the story itself, all the things that you and I are sort of sitting here going, oh, my God, I can't believe it. Even though I was the originator of it. I had to beg Warner Brothers to actually let me write it. Because the movie industry sucks. Where I just said, I don't care. Just give me the worst deal possible. I just want to write it.

[Pablo Torre]

I love that that's how much you cared about this.

[Dave Mandel]

And this would have been around. I wrote it right around when my daughter was born. So that would have been like 2008. And then having written It. There was this period where Ben Affleck got very interested in it. There was a moment where he was maybe going to star and direct in.

[Pablo Torre]

It and he would have played. If he did play a character, do.

[Dave Mandel]

You know which one in my mind would have been Kekich. He was. He was Kekich.

[Pablo Torre]

Agreed.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a producer or another commentator)]

It's called the trade and it has been in development with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to star in the roles of Peterson and Kekich.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, there you go.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a producer or another commentator)]

But we need a doc. That's what Peter's saying. That's just a move.

[Dave Mandel]

No, I want to. I want to know how far along in development this is.

[Pablo Torre]

I've.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly a producer or another commentator)]

I guess it's been in development a while, but it hasn't gotten the proper funding.

[Dave Mandel]

And at some point the fake dream that perhaps Matt would be Damon would have been Peterson. Although again, more wishful thinking perhaps than we never got anywhere in here somewhere. I think he was still interested in directing it. And at some point or another his brother Casey Affleck I think took a pass. That was another pass.

[Pablo Torre]

Your script in 2009, for people who aren't familiar with like again, the back rooms of Hollywood, like the blacklist identifies it as this script. Of. Of great note, that was.

[Dave Mandel]

That was very nice. Yes. I was very much hoping coming off of Veep that someone would more or less let me do it again, that I had whatever, achieved enough some sort of success to do and had become more of a director in my own right and whatever. And that sort of coincided very much where the movie industry sort of went away and they stopped making movies. So that's kind of where we are at the moment.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Had you considered rebooting this as a Marvel movie perhaps Maybe that would 2 2.

[Dave Mandel]

Superman and Bat swap lives. Exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Marty Appel]

But.

[Pablo Torre]

But there's. But the idea that you have this passion project. I like to imagine the would be movie poster. Right. Because you mentioned Damon and Affleck. I want to dwell for a second here on the Wives, though Marilyn was fascinating.

[Dave Mandel]

Marilyn was a real ball breaker on the one hand, very concerned with appearances, very concerned with how like how things looked. The sort of the sense of propriety. But under it lurking something else. Someone like Anne Hathaway seemed like a no brainer.

[Pablo Torre]

What are you doing? What's wrong with you? You can't just go around kissing people, particularly not engaged people you want to kiss again. I suppose that it's worth noting that like actresses who are considered at least mentioned. Naomi Watts, Rachel Weiss, Rebecca hall, you.

[Dave Mandel]

Know, it's interesting Susan Kekich. There was a real, just like kind of California girl, free spirit to her. And I'm not gonna lie, in certain ways she was perhaps fleshed out character, because it's funny in a weird way, because in talking to Fritz Peterson, he was talking about how in love he was with her. It was almost like in his telling, she's the most idealized character. So she. I never got to hear a flaw. Do you know what I mean?

[Pablo Torre]

And the reason Fritz never told Dave about Sue's flaws in all the time they spent together and all the time Dave spent researching Fritz's life. It brings us finally, finally to the most stunning part of one of the most batshit crazy sagas in sports history, which is that Fritz and Sue never broke up. Seriously, I'm looking at the timeline here. Fritz and sue got married in 1974, the year after the trade got announced. And what still blows the mind of the PR guy who organized those dueling pressers, our old pal Marty, it's that Fritz and Sue proceeded to stay together for more than 50F years.

[Marty Appel]

That's the wonderful side of the story. That's a true love story. I mean, who goes 50 years? You know, a couple meets in college, falls in love. It's the great American love story. It still doesn't go 50 years. That's not the way things work. So it's wonderful that it did for them. So it is maybe the greatest of all American love stories.

[Pablo Torre]

And Fritz, in various interviews he gave over the years, could not agree more. I mean, just listen to him.

[Fritz Peterson]

The kids, probably, a couple of them probably aren't happy about it. But you know what? They're in their late 40s now and they're doing fine. They're good kids. So to that regard, that wasn't a problem either. I mean, they probably wish it wouldn't have happened, but I don't know how it could not have happened. Some way, we've just had so much fun, and I thank God for my new wife. We're still partying every night. Our honeymoon never wore off, and I hope it never does.

[Pablo Torre]

All of which leaves me with just one more question for Dave Mandel. What is the ending of your movie, such as it was, was what the.

[Dave Mandel]

Basic end was ultimately kick it. Just traded off to Cleveland and then bounces, whatever. And then Fritz is traded off. They just, they cast. Yeah, a year later, arm injury that year, and, you know, wasn't quite the same pitcher. Which again, speaks at the time to the disposable nature of These players and the contracts at that time. And the only thing that he had been asked and assured is that he, of course, would never get traded to Cleveland himself. And they trade him to Cleveland as well. Kakich is long gone. They're not team mates again. But they are. They are there.

[Pablo Torre]

There's a cosmic connection.

[Marty Appel]

Exactly.

[Dave Mandel]

Just the curse of Cleveland. And it's sort of a sense of the one couple is together, is happy. The other couple has tried a couple of times, but it hasn't quite worked. Whatever. And I think I'm trying to remember, God, it's been so long. And it does end with a little bit of a joke, which was, Kekich, at that point, has a new young wife, and Fritz makes a trade joke with him. And that's sort of the. That was sort of the end, which was my. A little bit of an attempt at sort of a, if you will, sort of Billy Wilder. Nobody's perfect. Some like it hot. Last line. Want a trade or something?

[Marty Appel]

Right, But.

[Pablo Torre]

Right, right, right. That's.

[Dave Mandel]

That was my end. But. But ultimately, like I said, trying to make some sense of this, that somehow in this crazy story, there was a real love story, although perhaps we even need to question that. I guess that's. That's my end.

[Pablo Torre]

So what I have found out at the end of this conversation is that we need to crowdfund a speedboat for Mike Cacic. All right, so the episode is not over yet. And it's not over yet because about two weeks ago, while finishing production on this thing that we'd been working on for months now, that's when it first started. I got an alert on my phone that made me need to sit down. The headline from the Associated Press read, fritz Peterson, Yankees pitcher who traded wives with teammate Mike Kekich, dies at age 81. It turns out that Fritz had been fighting lung cancer. I didn't know about this in part because I never got to talk to Fritz peterson myself. In 2018, Fritz's family had posted on Facebook that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Disease, which is why talking to Dave Mandel in the first place was so important to this episode. Dave had talked to Fritz extensively even before that. And Dave was more obsessed with this story, with Fritz's story, than even I was. But neither of us knew the detail that the AP obituary revealed in the second paragraph of that story after the one about the trade, which was again, erroneously called, you know, a wife swap. What we didn't know was that Fritz had actually died at his home in Minnesota back in October of 2023, according to county records. Which means that Fritz's death had been kept secret for, yeah, about half a year. And in fact, the only reason why it leaked out at all is because the athletic department at Northern Illinois University, University, where Fritz went to college, had accidentally spread the news. And then the AP checked the county records, and then people realized that Fritz had been gone long before they realized it. And all of it explains why reporting this story over the last six months had been so difficult and so strange. I presume that sue wouldn't want to talk in public about any of this stuff, but now realizing that she had lost her husband of 50 years, I mean, of course she wouldn't. And the same goes for all the four kids involved who we've mentioned here and who I didn't get to talk to. And only in retrospect, do I now realize what this was. It was an overdue sense of privacy for an athlete whose most intimate decisions became willfully known to so many strangers all across America throughout time. And so it did feel appropriate that the real last scene in this real life love story just wasn't for the rest of us to see. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out A Meadowlark Media Production and I'll talk to you next time. It.