Page 121 - 1975 BoSox

RICK KREUGER GREW UP IN A blue-collar suburb of Grand Rapids named Wyoming, Michigan. He was born —
the youngest of four children — on November 3, 1948, to Leona Kreuger, a homemaker, and her husband, Bernard, an electrician at the General Motors as- sembly plant in Grand Rapids. Bernie Kreuger, in Rick’s words, knew “enough about baseball, just enough about pitching, that he told me a couple of things to do. ey turned out to be very important things.” One lesson was to “throw every ball at the knees.” Bernie Kreuger knew that form counted when you pitch. He knew that rhythm was important and told Rick to “point your toe with your kicking leg and look pretty. It held me back, and allowed me to lean into the plate with my hip.”1
ere was an alley beside the Kreuger house and Bernie would catch his son’s pitches whenever he could, starting when Rick—properly Richard Allen — was around 7 or 8 years old, when Rick was old enough for Little League. Neither Rick’s older brother, Tommy, nor their twin sisters played baseball. Rick had the desire, though, and they lived not far from the front gate of Lee Field, the facility for Lee High School. It was a simple walk across the street to play sandlot ball.
When it came time for high school, Rick made the varsity baseball team as a pitcher while still a sopho- more (freshmen were not eligible) at Catholic Central, a larger Class A high school. He trans-
ferred back to Lee High, though, a much smaller school, but the coach at Lee High already had his players in mind and would not let Rick join the pitching sta . He made him play the out eld and throw batting practice, but never so much as granted him a tryout on the mound. “I begged him all through my junior year, and he would not let me pitch. And senior
year came and I was begging him again. So nally, I just said to him well, can I just have the ball and I’ll throw on my own against the screen, because my dad had taught me when I’m not around to just take a piece of rag and put it up on the screen and throw at it. So I started doing that, and apparently [someone] saw me and told the athletic director who told the coach, ‘Give this kid a chance.’ So he let me start a game against another small school [laughs]. And I pitched a one-hitter for ve innings and he still took me out. It even came down to the last game of the year, and we’re beating the heck out of this team, so everyone was taking a turn at pitching. And I said, ‘Let me throw, I want to throw.’ ‘Nah, you don’t want to throw against these guys.’ Ironically, when I nished there, I went to [Grand Rapids] junior college as a nobody. But the coach mistook me for a di erent Kreuger. ere were two Bob Kreugers from large schools that had graduated, and both were pitchers and I signed up and he said, ‘Kreuger, Kreuger, aren’t you a pitcher?’ And I said, ‘Yep,’ but I was left-handed. But anyhow, from there I became an All-American and I got a scholarship to Michigan State.”
After Grand Rapids Junior College, Rick went on to Michigan State and started o well, though a basket- ball ankle injury robbed him of almost his full junior year. A Detroit Tigers scout based in Grand Rapids, Bob Sullivan, urged the coach to give Kreuger a try as a pitcher. MSU was losing to Notre Dame by
something like 7-0 and Rick came in and held them for four or ve innings, while Michigan State came from behind to win the game. Kreuger helped with a home run. He got o to a tremendous start his senior year; he recalled, “No one even had a hit o me in the spring.” After building a 4-0 record, he developed mononucleosis playing a rainy, sleety game against Central Michigan and
Rick Kreuger
by Bill Nowlin
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