Page 122 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 115
riding a few hours on the bus back and forth. Depleted by the disease, Rick ended the season with a 5-3 mark and the scouts were no longer hovering around. So Rick pitched for a local team, the Grand Rapids Sullivans (Bob Sullivan was owner/manager). e team had tremendous success, traveling to the 1970 National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kansas.“We went to the national tournament and we won the national title. And, I beat Alaska in the nal game. And actually I signed, just before I pitched that game.”
Boston Red Sox veteran area scout Maurice DeLoof signed Kreuger while Rick was just nishing up at Michigan State. e Sox sent him to their Class A a liate in Greenville, South Carolina and he did very well. In 1972 he was to go to spring training and to play with Winston-Salem but there was an injury that almost ended his career. In between the ’71 and ’72 seasons, he had gone back to Michigan State to begin work on a graduate degree. He was playing “tough-guy football” with his fraternity brothers — no equipment, no protective padding — and he had a head-on colli- sion with another player. Both were knocked uncon- scious. In spring training, the radiant back pain was still there and he was unable to pitch. He was sent back home, where a surgeon diagnosed a ruptured disc and cut him open to repair it. Rick missed the entire season, gured his career was over, and got a position teaching high-school mathematics.
It was sometime in the middle of 1973 that Kreuger unexpectedly heard from the Red Sox again. A letter arrived, saying to show up at Winston-Salem if he thought he could still pitch. School was over, so he reported to the Winston-Salem Red Sox. e manager there hadn’t been expecting him and asked Rick, “What are you doing here?”Rick explained about the letter,and so manager Bill Slack said,“Wait a minute, I’m checking this out with [farm director] Ed Kenney.” He called Boston, and then told Rick, “All right, yeah, I’m supposed to let you on the team ... but we’re not paying you until you pitch.” He pitched soon enough, and won a game in relief. He was put in the next game, too, and would have won that one but for an error
behind him. e manager gave Kreuger a start and he tossed three shutouts in a row, contending for the league’s scoreless innings record. “He loves me now, but I told him I had to go back early because I was coaching the freshman football team at high school.” Rick pitched the rst game of the playo s, won it, and hopped in his already-packed car. Just then the manager came out and pleaded with him to pitch the second game, too, because the scheduled pitcher had a sore arm. Kreuger told him, “I’ll tell you what. I can go put my uniform back on and start this game for you and go four or ve innings.” He left the game, with a lead, after ve. He went home and the team went on to win the playo s, but the Red Sox were sore. “How could you leave us?” ey told him, “You have to make it to spring training or forget it.”
Rick took a chance, left his teaching job, and reported in the spring of 1974, jumping to Triple-A. He threw 155 innings, and was 6-8 but with a very good 3.08 ERA. ere were more twists and turns to come in his unusual career. He was called up to Boston at the end of ’74 but didn’t appear in any games that year. He might have been called up earlier in 1975 but both he and Jim Burton were pitching very well for Pawtucket and there was a choice to be made between them. e two each pitched a game in a three-day stretch. Kreuger pitchedanine-inningshutoutinthe rstgame.“And everybody’s going, ‘Kreug, you’re going to the big leagues, man!’” Two days later, Burton threw a seven- inning no-hitter. Burton got the call in June.
Kreuger got called up later, in September, and debuted in a blowout game on September 6, 1975. By the time he took over for Roger Moret, the Red Sox had a comfortable 20-4 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers and one can guess that most of the 11,992 had already left County Stadium. Kreuger retired the side in the eighth, but gave up three hits and two runs in the ninth. He appeared in only one other game that year, on September 28, and threw a perfect sixth and seventh inning against the Cleveland Indians at Fenway Park. Dick Pole and Jim Willoughby weren’t as good that day, and the Indians won, 11-4. Kreuger didn’t make