Rickey Keeton

December 2nd, 2009 @ 07:26pm

By ’82, Rickey Keeton’s major league career was already finished, but he didn’t know it yet. Only playing parts of ’80 & ’81, he was traded to the Astros after that season and spent 1982 in AAA for the Astros.

Compiling a 7-13 record on the strength of a 5.19 ERA, will rarely get you recalled from the minors. His 1.655 WHIP really gives you an idea how his summer of ’82 went. Toiling like that in AAA, watching your old team head for the playoffs, must’ve been very hard. Though, I’m sure he was rooting for his old teammates to win it all.

His final major league appearance was a Tuesday night back in August 1981, when the White Sox visited Milwaukee. Everything started out fine, but blew up in his face out of nowhere.

Milwaukee was losing 3-0 in the top of the 6th when Brewers manager Buck Rodgers made a pitching change. He brought in the young Rickey Keeton from the ‘pen, who’d been pitching very well for the past few weeks, posting a 2.84 ERA since the 2nd half of the season had begun.

When Rickey took the mound, there was 1 out and the bases were loaded. He gets the first batter to groundout to 3rd, and the next one to fly out to leftfield. Inning over. Things looking good.

That would prove to be the final out he’d ever record in the majors. When the 7th inning began, everything broke loose. Ron LeFlore led the inning off with a single before stealing 2nd and being doubled in by Mike Squires. Future Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk then singles Squires over to 3rd, to put runners at the corners with nobody out.

Greg Luzinski draws a walk, and the White Sox have the bases loaded for the 2nd inning in a row. At that point, Keeton gets replaces by Jamie Easterly, who allows 1 of Keeton’s baserunners to score.

And that was it for Keeton’s career. After the ’81 season finished, Rickey was traded to the Astros and moved on to the Royals organization after a while. He finished his baseball career in ’85 for the Omaha Royals, going 8-4 with a 4.96 ERA.

I think this is Rickey’s only Topps card, as I couldn’t find any other when I Googled him. Oddly, ’82 seems to be the only year he had any cards, and all 3 major card companies made a Rickey Keeton card (Fleer, Donruss, and Topps).