Cup of coffee
Ex-Brewers pitcher’s career just a few innings
If you’re a longtime baseball fan, you might be able to name a few players from the 1970 Brewers, Milwaukee’s fresh new team back then. Tommy Harper. Mike Hegan. Danny Walton.
Ray Peters? No? Don’t be too hard on yourself. His major league career ended 47 years ago Friday after, officially, two innings in a Brewers uniform. The righthanded pitcher appeared in two other innings but didn’t get anyone out, so they don’t count in the record books. And he never batted.
You won’t meet a nicer guy than Ray, or one more at peace with a career that fizzled so soon after it began.
“It was shorter than I wanted, but it was a great, great experience and one I don’t regret whatsoever,” he told me in a phone interview this week from his home in Denton, Texas, near Dallas.
Ray is 70 now and retired from a successful post-baseball career in real estate lending. He and his wife, Janis, have two grown sons.
He was only too happy to talk about his cup of coffee with the Brewers. Ray is featured in a 2003 book with that title: “Cup of Coffee: The Very Short Careers of Eighteen Major League Pitchers” by Rob Trucks.
Ray appeared in two games with the Brewers, which makes him twice as lucky as a surprisingly high number of guys who appeared in just one big league contest, dating back to the 19th century. According to Baseball Reference, there were 1,002 batters with only one career game in the majors, and 536 pitchers, though there’s overlap between the two lists.
Ray grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. This son of two postal
workers attended Harvard University and starred in baseball there, though the school unfortunately didn’t offer athletic scholarships. His degree is in Latin American history and Spanish.
He signed with the Seattle Pilots after being drafted in 1969. He had taken a pass four times on joining other clubs who drafted him earlier because he wanted to finish college.
The Pilots became the Brewers the following year. After pitching well in minor league ball in Portland, Ore., Ray suddenly was called up to the majors. He got a room at the Schroeder Hotel in downtown Milwaukee and prepared to be the starting pitcher for the Brewers in a game against the Cleveland Indians at County Stadithe um on June 4, 1970.
The box score would suggest that it didn’t go well. As a mere 8,625 fans looked on, he gave up six hits, three walks and four earned runs, and was charged with the 8-4 loss. He pitched the first two innings and was pulled after running into trouble in the third.
“I couldn’t get the breaking ball over. I was overthrowing,” he recalled. “Nerves had a great deal to do with it. It is something else to stand out there for the first time. It scares the hell out of you.”
The Milwaukee Journal headline the next day said: “Indians finish destruction of Brewers’ pitching staff.” The article calls Peters a 6-foot-5inch Harvard graduate — actually 6-foot-7, he insists — and quotes him saying, “It’s a lousy way to gain confidence.”
On June 9, he started another game, this one in Detroit against the Tigers. He struggled again, failed to get any batters out and was pulled by manager Dave Bristol in the first inning. Again, he was saddled with the loss.
Looking at the bright side, Ray recalls the thrill of pitching to one of his idols, Al Kaline, though he accidentally knocked him down with an inside pitch. He also won’t forget facing his favorite left-handed hitter, Vada Pinson, in the Cleveland game, and logging his only major league strikeout against catcher Ray Fosse.
He’s also proud of wearing number 41 for the Brewers, the first player to wear that number in a Milwaukee major league team uniform after Braves great Eddie Mathews.
Those two games were all she wrote for Ray. His earned run average is a staggering 31.50. He was returned to the minors, traded to the Phillies and out of baseball after a frustrating 1971 season in minor leagues.
Ray would forever feel a kinship with Moonlight Graham, the player immortalized in “Field of Dreams” who appeared briefly in one major league game in 1905 but never got to bat.
Ray still considers the Brewers his favorite team, though he doesn’t watch games much anymore. He has passed along his two major league gloves to his sons.
He didn’t get to keep any baseballs from his two starts, and he’s unaware of a single photograph or any video footage of him pitching in those games. He is pictured on custom and anniversary cards, but never appeared on a regular baseball card.
But he is not forgotten. “I get one or two autograph requests a month. It’s unbelievable,” he said.
He always mails one out and includes a letter that offers this advice: “I don’t know how old you are, but if you’re young my parting line is: Get as good an education as you can. Do not count on being a professional athlete. If you make it, great!”