Game 14: Twins at Yankees

Because we can’t have nice things, Kenta Maeda cannot start today. Instead, it will be still-technically-rookie Louie Varland. He throws a 94-ish fastball, a slider, cutter and change. (Slider and cutter, Foley would approve.) The Yankees will start lefty Nestor Cortes, who throws about the same mix of pitches, and has pretty impressive ink on his right arm.

Whenever the Twins play the Yankees, I have to use this clip:

Today’s Adventures In Baseball History takes us back to 1973....

1973 was a bad year for baseball hate mail. Primarily, of course, because Hank Aaron was chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record. He broke another record that year: most mail ever sent to one person. The Post Office gave him a plaque for it. In his autobiography, Aaron said the majority of mail was positive... but he got a lot of hate mail, too. And the worst letters, he kept. As a vile reminder of the hatred he’d faced from racists his whole career.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn got a lot of angry mail, too. Much of it about the new DH rule, from fans who thought it violated the game’s precious sanctity. (I encourage anyone who feels that way about the pitch clock to Tweet angrily to Rob Manfred. I also encourage everyone who likes it to congratulate Theo Epstein, whose idea it really was.)

Kuhn got more angry letters, though, about the Yankees. Two Yankees in particular. The ones who, openly, swapped families. Wives, children, and even their dogs. Yeah, this happened! Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson.

They were kinda friends on the team, so hey, let’s be Extra Friends! And let’s have press conferences about it!

(I’m guessing this was not particularly traumatic for the dogs, I’ve done dogsitting. They’ll miss their owners. For, like, 10 minutes. Give ‘em snacky treats and you’re their new buddy.)

What’s even crazier about that Yankees family-swapping story is, for one couple, it actually worked. Killed the friendship, naturally, and was a colossal disaster for the other couple. But one of them? As of 2013, they were still married (and I hope their children are still very much in therapy).

As a general rule I would not suggest family swapping, it’s not a thing TwinkieTown endorses. Yeah, we like Prince here, and he could get freaky, but even Prince would kinda hesitate at switching kids. There’s “Brady Bunch” and there’s taking that concept too far.

Swapping dogs? Eh, I give it a pass.