[3] In high school, he starred in basketball, led the team to three regional championships, and was all-state in his senior year, 1955.
[6][4] He attended Grove City as a mathematics major, after signing a professional baseball contract as an amateur free agent with the Chicago White Sox in 1956.
[5] He stopped playing basketball midway through his junior year, to focus on baseball, but continued as a student, earning a degree in 1959.
As a pitcher, Peters had 10-5 win-loss record and 2.81 earned run average (ERA), striking out 142 batters in 128 innings.
[1] Peters won 19 games with only eight losses (including 11 consecutive wins), with a league leading 2.33 ERA.
[10] In July 1963, he threw a one-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles, with the only hit a bloop single by opposing pitcher Robin Roberts.
[13][10] Three of the top 10 ERA pitchers in the American League were White Sox (Peters, Joe Horlen, and Juan Pizarro),[14] but the team batting average was .247, with only 106 home runs.
Tommy John, who lived with him part of the year, recalled that Peters had to sleep on a mattress on the floor and could not stand up straight in the mornings.
Peters suffered a serious back injury early in the 1968 season during a pinch hitting at bat, that continued to plague him through later life; resulting in one of his legs appearing shorter than the other.
[1] He was frequently used as a pinch-hitter,[2] once winning a game with a pinch-hit home run against the Kansas City Athletics in the bottom of the 13th inning.
[21][2] On May 5, 1968, Peters hit a grand slam in Comiskey Park, helping the White Sox to a 5–1 victory over the New York Yankees.
Obtaining the key to Joe Pepitone's room, Peters snuck into the hitter's room in the middle of the night and started jumping on the bed and screaming, scaring the hitter tremendously until Pepitone finally got the lights turned on and figured out what had happened.
[17] Another time, he caught a baby octopus while skindiving and threw it at Ed Stroud in the locker room the next day.