Page 222 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 215
hits and 16 triples. at .325 average placed him third in the league.
In 1941 Pesky progressed from Class B ball in Rocky Mount to Louisville, where he played for the Colonels, again hitting .325. Louisville was a Double-A team in the American Association, managed by Bill Burwell. Pesky hit for precisely the same average — .325, and once again led the league in hits, this time with 195. He won the MVP award in the American Association for 1941.
By year’s end, Pesky was bound for Boston, o ered $4,000 for his rst year’s salary. He joined the Sox for spring training just three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. War loomed large over all of baseball, and during Pesky’s rookie year; he spent three evenings a week beginning in May taking classes for the United States Navy, where he was in training to become a naval aviator, in the same program as team- mate Ted Williams. Pesky won the shortstop spot in spring training and was assigned number 6. Despite the need to balance baseball with naval training, Johnny Pesky nished the season with a .331 batting average, second only to Williams (.356) in the American League. He led the league in sacri ce hits. ere was no “rookie of the year” award yet. at same year, e Sporting News named Johnny the shortstop on its All Star Major League team. And he came in third in the MVP voting, behind Joe Gordon and Ted Williams.
Tom Yawkey had his own prize for Pesky. At season’s end, there was a $5,000 bonus for the rookie short- stop — enough to buy his parents a home in Portland. Johnny Pesky never forgot Tom Yawkey’s generosity at a time when Johnny was o to military service, perhaps never to return. Yawkey won erce loyalty from many of his players; with gestures like this, one can understand why.
World War II took three years out of Pesky’s baseball career, but while in the Navy he met his future wife, Ruth Hickey. She was a WAVE whom Johnny met while serving as an operations o cer in Atlanta. Ruthie and Johnny remained very happily married for more than 60 years. In 1953 they adopted a ve-
month-old son through Catholic Charities — David Pesky, who was born in December 1952. Like a lot of ballplayers, Johnny had many opportunities to play baseball during the war and even played in the AL vs. NL All-Star Game at Furlong Field, Honolulu, in 1945.
In 1946, the war over, Johnny and the Red Sox won the pennant, and took the ght right down to the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Johnny hit safely a league-leading 208 times that season, with a .335 average (third in the league), scoring 115 times (second behind Ted’s 142.) e Series was a disappointing one for Pesky, as it was for two other players, named Musial (who batted .222 in Series play) and Williams (.200). And generations of baseball a cionados have heard that “Pesky held the ball” on a key play in the eighth inning of Game Seven, allowing Enos Slaughter to score the winning run from rst base on Harry Walker’s hit to left center. Cardinals 4, Red Sox 3. Films of the play do not show a clear hesitation, and perhaps sportswriter Bob Broeg was right in arguing that credit should go to Slaughter for his “mad dash” around the bases rather than blame being assigned Pesky for what was, at most, momentary surprise that Slaughter was streaking toward the plate rather than secure at third.
e following year, Pesky again collected his 200 hits (207 this time around) — the third year in a row he’d led the league. He and Dom DiMaggio were the table- setters for Ted Williams, and the speedy Pesky was usually discouraged from stretching a single into a double, because a double just meant the other team would walk Ted to ll the unoccupied sack at rst. Pesky was a clever in elder as well; three times he pulled the rare hidden-ball trick, and would have done so a fourth time had the pitcher not stepped o the rubber at the wrong moment.
e Red Sox came within a game of winning the pennant in 1948 and 1949, and were only four games behind in 1950. ese were some great Red Sox teams. Pesky’s place, though, never seemed secure — a strange spot to be in for a top-ranking shortstop. When Johnny joined the team for spring training in ’48, he was unsure