As one of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball, the Boston Red Sox have seen many former players make history.
Some have enjoyed trailblazing careers while others have been at the center of cultural change. And last week, the team received news that a former pitcher, who rose from an undrafted free agent to taking the mound in the big leagues and endured some prejudice in his career as well, has died.
Boston Red Sox 3-Year Pitcher Dies At 77
Richard Kreuger, who made his major-league debut with the Red Sox in 1975 and pitched with the team for three seasons, died at age 77 in his native Michigan, according to a local obituary.
Kreuger logged a 4.63 ERA in 35 total innings in his Red Sox career, which included 31 innings for the 1976 team and a memorable moment on September 21 of that season, when he took a no-hitter to the seventh inning and ended up finishing a complete-game three-hitter..
“It’s not that I played a long time in the big leagues, but I got to play at places all players want to play,” Kreuger told M Live’s Don VanderVeen in 2012. “My best memory at Fenway was when I pitched a no-hitter at Fenway Park for seven innings, but ended up losing a three-hitter. The crowd there gave me a standing ovation. I tipped my cap, absorbed it all in, and kept on going into the dugout. I wondered at the time, how many people actually get a standing ovation at Fenway Park? It doesn’t get much better than that.”
Former Boston Red Sox Pitcher Richard Kreuger Was Victim Of ‘Prejudice’ In Overseas Career
After his time with the Red Sox, Kreuger spent part of the 1978 season with the Cleveland Indians, then ended his big-league career. He went on to pitch in Japan, which has become a common practice for contemporary professional baseball players, but was much less common at the time.
During his stint for Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants, Kreuger recalled that he was the victim of some cultural prejudice.
“He even found that his own catcher was calling pitches that resulted in Kreuger throwing to a batter’s strength instead of to his weakness,” Bill Nowlin wrote for the Society for American Baseball Research . “He stewed, and began to look like he might become a little controversial. ‘It felt strange being the center of prejudice,’ he recalled, but he had become a born-again Christian in the fall of 1977, during his last year with the Red Sox.”
Kreuger later became an algebra teacher in Michigan and coached baseball at a local university, while also running a baseball clinic and camp.
