- So, today I wanna talk
about a pretty wild trade of baseball players,
but it had nothing to do with baseball itself.
These baseball players actually traded families.
- Oh.
- Oh yeah.
- You can do that?
- Apparently, yes.
- If the salaries match up, then.
(whimsical orchestral music)
- So, in 1972, there were two baseball players
for the New York Yankees, your team.
Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich,
and they were roommates and very good friends,
and so because of that,
their families hung out
with great regularity, mostly their wives.
They would go out on, like, double dates
pretty frequently. - And they had kids?
- They both have kids, yes. - Okay.
- This story is from 1973.
Get in the mindset here.
You're in that, like, post-'60s era
where free love is sort of like more in vogue
than it ever has been before,
but in the early '70s, it started to get real.
You know what I mean?
- I remember it fondly.
- Yes, we all do.
Swapping of spouses is, you know, sort of in vogue,
and becoming a little bit more of a thing.
Everyone was doing it.
- Keys in the bowl kind of thing?
- Sort of like keys in the bowl sort of thing.
- Like, for a night.
(Ryan and Clara laugh)
- Yeah, very rarely were they actually,
like, signing paperwork,
but it happened in this scenario.
So, in the summer of 1972,
these four friends go to the party
of sportswriter Maury Allen's place.
- That's very '70s.
Going to a party at a sportswriter's house?
- Yes.
- Nobody wants to hang out with sportswriters.
- No, no, no, no, then or now.
- Yeah. (Clara laughs)
- And afterwards, they have such a good time,
they decide to keep things going, in a manner of speaking,
by going to a local diner.
Let's go out and get something to eat.
However, let's drive each others' wives,
and kind of see how things go.
Well, it turns out, one of the two couples didn't show up
to the diner for another two and a half hours, so.
- [Clara] And the other couple just waited there?
(all laugh)
- [Seth] I guess let's get appetizers, or.
- Yeah, we'll have another order of fries, I guess.
So they have this party, and they hang out afterwards,
and there's probably some hanky panky going on,
and they go, oh, you know what?
This is actually really fun.
And what all four parties realize is
that they're falling in love with the other spouse,
and so they decide, after a few months,
to make it a permanent arrangement.
Fritz Peterson's gonna move into Mike Kekich's house,
and Mike Kekich is going to move
into Fritz Peterson's house,
and leave the wives, and the kids,
and even the dogs, they both had dogs,
so they were, like, new dogs they had to take care of,
and they just packed a bag
and moved into the other guy's house.
- I would've loved it if they also left the clothes
in the closet, squeeze in.
- That, very much, I've been thinking
about, like, how much stuff made the move?
Like, you take your toothbrush, right?
And your deodorant. - Absolutely, those go first.
- The dog thing is really sticking with me.
- Why?
- I don't know, and I have a wife.
Like, I should've been more upset by that,
but, like, you can't take my dog away.
The dog definitely was like, something's not right here.
- Something's not right.
You don't smell the same.
There's something weird going on here.
- How many times do you think one
or the other, like, pulled into the driveway,
and he was like, oh, shit, this isn't my house anymore?
- Got the wrong key in the door.
- I gotta go to Mike's house.
- Fritz, you don't live here anymore.
- Yeah, she loves me now.
- After a few months, right before the 1973 season started,
in, like, March of that year,
they decided, okay, look, this is a permanent thing,
we're gonna stick with it.
Word is gonna get out.
People are gonna think, as we did
right from the jump, that it's a sex thing,
and it's more than that.
They kept saying it's not a sex thing,
which, like, come on.
- You're having some sex, I mean, I hope.
- You're having some sex, presumably.
So, in March, right before the 1973 season,
they do two separate press conferences
on the same day.
Fritz Peterson goes at 10 in the morning, I think,
and Mike goes at 4:00 p.m.,
or maybe it's the other way,
maybe they switched, I don't know.
There's a lot of it going around at the time.
So they have these two press conferences
on the same day to tell the press,
hey, look, here's what's gonna happen,
and everyone just be cool about it.
So Fritz Peterson and Mike's ex-wife Susanne had
a long and fruitful relationship.
They are still married to this day, as a matter of fact,
and Fritz has no problem talking about it,
and being open about it,
which kinda makes sense 'cause he, I think, made out
like a bandit in this deal.
Mike and Marilyn, Fritz's ex-wife,
almost immediately were like, oh, this was a mistake.
They had a little bit of an on-again, off-again thing,
and then I think they were like,
oh, I don't know, this is no--
- Get out of my house.
- Yeah, could you please leave?
- But this is a husband swap, right?
- This was absolutely a husband swap.
Like, they are the ones who packed up and left.
- And it makes sense, right?
They were involved in a profession
where people sometimes get traded,
so they're used to that,
and their wives just probably sat around
with baseball cards like, well,
my guy, you know, he's great in middle relief,
but we need someone who can, you know,
strike out lefties, if you know what I mean,
so I feel like we can do a.
Wait, so, with the diner thing.
One couple showed up really late.
- Yes.
- One couple was at the diner just, like,
I guess we can order more potato skins.
I don't know where they are.
- So, there's this great article written
by Gil Troy for The Daily Beast
that sort of, like, summarizes it really well,
and he says in the article, "That night,
"they lingered outside the Allen home,
"then decided to continue to a local Fort Lee diner."
And then it says here, "Mr. Kekich and Mrs. Peterson arrived
"for breakfast more than two and a half hours later."
- Wait, okay, so.
- So Mike Kekich and Fritz's wife, Marilyn,
they presumably pulled off somewhere,
and had some hanky panky,
whereas Mr. Peterson and Mrs. Kekich, I guess.
- Got to know each other.
- Got to know each other over a plate of fries
at the diner while they were waiting for them.
- Their relationship is the one
that worked out, right? - And their relationship is
the one that worked out.
- So it seems like they maybe
weren't the initiators of this.
- They have since said
that it was a totally even, all four parties were, like,
all in on it.
- Someone had to have been, like, faking their enthusiasm.
Sure, yeah, you could come to my house forever.
(all laugh)
- Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were in development--
They didn't swap wives, but they were going to develop this
into a movie, they were in talks to produce it as a movie,
and Mike Kekich in particular was like, hey, not cool.
I'm pretty sure he eventually moved
to, like, Arizona, or Nevada,
or some place in the southwest,
and even changed his identity.
I don't know if that's related.
He did do that, but he's, like, now
a sort of notorious recluse,
and when he heard about the movie,
he was like, no, no, no, no, not cool.
- It's like he took a chance once.
He made a big swing once.
(Ryan and Seth laugh)
Not doing it again.
Ruined everything.
- Yeah, last time someone said they had a good idea,
didn't work out great.
- It didn't work out so well.
- Ben.
- It feels like there's a lesson here.
I don't really know what it is
because it's got both outcomes.
Like, it worked out for one couple.
If they both broke up, and it was, like,
all four people were devastated,
then it's like, okay, don't do this.
And if it worked out for both of them,
then it's like, oh, everyone should wife-swap.
- Rush out to wife-swap.
(all laugh)
- I'm still, I'm sorry, I'm hung up on the dogs.
If my dog is watching this,
I want her to know that I wouldn't trade her for any dog.
- Trudy, do you want to address her directly?
- Trudy.
Trudy, you're my world.
(laughs)
I wouldn't trade you for anything.
- That's sweet, I like that.
No dog-swapping for Seth.
- No.