Yesterday, the Red Sox announced that they will waive their normal requirements for retiring players’ numbers in order to retire Johnny Pesky’s #6. No Red Sox will ever again wear that number.
All I can say is that it’s about time.
Johnny Pesky has been an exceptional ambassador for the Red Sox since his first day in the uniform in 1942. Always a gentleman, Pesky has served in every possibly uniformed capacity for the team, from player to coach to manager, over a career that has spanned over 65 years. That alone makes him worthy of the honor, but let the record also show that the man Ted Williams affectionately called “Needlenose” was also a hell of a baseball player. Give him back the three years he lost to World War II, and then place him in a time when 162-game seasons were played, and it’s not in any way unreasonable to say that Pesky’s career numbers could have looked something like this:
1809 Games, 6920 at bats, 1269 Runs, 2146 Hits, 336 doubles, 75 triples, 24 homers, 583 RBI, 917 walks, .310 batting average, .394 on-base percentage, .391 slugging percentage, .785 OPS, 111 OPS+
Folks, those are very respectable numbers, extremely similar to the numbers actually posted by Hall of Famers Luke Appling and Billy Herman through a comparable number of games. Pesky’s longevity likely would have kept him from being elected to the Hall of Fame, but a shortstop/third baseman (and Pesky was a good fielder at both spots) who posted this kind of career line primarily for a high-profile team like the Red Sox would have garnered considerable Hall of Fame support, as opposed to the single lousy vote Pesky actually got during his only year on the ballot.
The honor of being the only non-Hall of Fame Red Sox to have is number retired is probably the next best thing, and it couldn’t happen to a more desrving guy.
Congratulations, Needlnose!
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