Former Yankees baseball player desperate to block wife-swap film

NEW YORK - A former Yankees baseball player is desperate to block a movie based on a huge scandal that involved him and another player swapping wives in the 1970s.

Mike Kekich, 65, wants to block the movie, named ‘The Trade’ starring actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as it would be based on him and fellow pitcher Fritz Peterson, 69, swapping their wives.

Affleck, 38, a die-hard Red Sox fan, and his brother, Casey, are rewriting a second version of the script and have hired veteran sportswriters to help reach out to Yankees from that era.

But Kekich, who is believed to have created a completely new life and family in New Mexico, is refusing to participate.

“Kekich is panic-stricken. He has moved away and has a new identity. He is freaked out that those working on the movie found out where he is,” the New York Post quoted a source as saying.

“He isn’t too keen on having the scandal dredged up again after all this time.

“Other Yankees from that time have also been really unhelpful with facts and details of what happened. They are stonewalling,” the source stated.

The amazing drama started in 1972 after the two hurlers, old friends, joked about swapping wives. They followed through on it, although word didn’t get out until the spring of ‘73.

Marilyn Peterson moved in with Kekich, but it didn’t last. Susanne Kekich and Fritz are still married and live in New Jersey and Colorado. Kekich reportedly remarried and had another daughter.

“I’ve come to have a little more respect for the Yankees. There are some of those guys . . . that look like good guys . . . But as an institution? Disdain. Contempt,” Affleck recently told MTV.

On the movie’s subject matter, he said: “Guys [bleep]ing each others’ wives - that’s those Yankees.” (ANI)