page_title: Fritz Peterson
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Fritz Peterson / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Fritz Peterson (first row, far left, with glasses) on the Arlington High School baseball team during his senior year.
context_page_description: Fred Ingels Peterson is a former Major League Baseball player who played for the New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians, and Texas Rangers from 1966 to 1976. Peterson was a southpaw starting pitcher who enjoyed his best success in 1970 with the Yankees when he went 20–11 and pitched in the All-Star game. He is widely known for trading families with teammate Mike Kekich in the early 1970s. He had a career record of 133–131.
  Fritz Peterson has the lowest ratio of base on balls per innings pitched for any left-handed pitcher to pitch in the major leagues since the 1920s.
context_section_description: Peterson attended Arlington High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois.  He was the number two pitcher on his high school team, behind Gene Dahlquist, who went on to play college football at the University of Arizona and professionally for the Norfolk Neptunes in the Continental Football League.  Arlington High School produced several major league baseball players, including Paul Splittorff, Dick Bokelmann, and George Vukovich.  He attended college at Northern Illinois University. He was viewed as a promising hockey player and gave up playing hockey to concentrate on baseball. He was signed by the New York Yankees in 1963 as an amateur free agent by Yankee scout Lou Maguolo.
  Peterson and Splittorff pitched against each other twice during their careers, with Peterson winning both matchups.  On August 17, 1971, the Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals 2–0 at Yankee Stadium (in the days before the Designated Hitter, both pitchers went 0–2 at the plate), and on August 22, 1975 at the old Royals Stadium, the Indians beat the Royals, 9–5.
caption: Fritz Peterson (first row, far left, with glasses) on the Arlington High School baseball team during his senior year.
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