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The Most Bizarre Trade In Sports History

It involves wives, children, and even dogs. Yes, dogs

Ash Jurberg
6 min readJul 27, 2022
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MMajor league sports teams seem to thrive on trading. Team owners and managers exchange picks, players, and salaries like children trading cards in a playground. It is very rare to see trades involving wives, children, and pets — but one infamous trade had the media abuzz and was a viral story well before social media and the internet.

In my opinion, it is the strangest trade in sports history.

Welcome to the 1973 New York Yankees.

The prankster

The two players involved in the trade were left-hand pitchers with the New York Yankees, Fritz Peterson, and Mike Kekich.

Peterson was a very good pitcher. I'm not a baseball expert, but his stats seem impressive.

In his twenty-win 1970 season, Peterson pitched 260 innings and walked only 40 batters, which is considered an outstanding ratio. That same year he was the pitcher in the All-Star Game. He had the lowest earned run average (ERA) of all pitchers at the old Yankee stadium.

In addition to his pitching skills, he was known for his pranks.

These ranged from basic schoolboy stuff — putting talcum powers in player's hair dryers to…

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Ash Jurberg
Ash Jurberg

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