Johnny Pesky - Later Years

Later Years

Intermittently, Pesky was allowed to sit on the Red Sox bench during games, but three times was prevented from the task — once by his own general manager, Dan Duquette, a second time when the Baltimore Orioles complained to MLB, and a third time in March 2007, when Major League Baseball announced it would enforce limitations that only six coaches could be in uniform during a game. Pesky, as an instructor, was ineligible. On April 3, 2007, the North Shore Spirit, a now-defunct team in the Independent Can-Am League, in Lynn, Massachusetts invited Pesky to sit in their dugout — and serve as an honorary coach — anytime he wanted.

Pesky attended the 2004 World Series and, after the Game 4 triumph, was embraced by Boston players such as Tim Wakefield and Curt Schilling as a living representative of star Red Sox players of the past whose teams fell short of winning the Fall Classic. He played a poignant and prominent role in the ceremony in which the World Series Championship Rings were handed out (April 11, 2005). With the help of Carl Yastrzemski, he raised the 2004 World Series Championship banner up the Fenway Park center field flagpole. Pesky also had the honor of raising the Red Sox' 2007 World Series Championship banner on April 8, 2008.

On his 87th birthday, September 27, 2006, the Red Sox honored Pesky by officially naming the right-field foul pole "Pesky's Pole," although it had already been unofficially know as such. On September 23, 2008, the Red Sox announced that they would retire the No. 6 Pesky wore as a player to mark his 89th birthday and his long years of service to the club. (Pesky wore No. 22 as the team's manager in the 1960s, and No. 35 as a coach from 1975–1980. Although he reclaimed No. 6 and wore it from 1981–1984, between 1985 and its retirement the number also was assigned to players such as Bill Buckner, Rick Cerone, Damon Berryhill and Tony Peña. Pesky's was the sixth number retired by the Red Sox; his number retired was the first to break the club's code to have a number retired: being in the Baseball Hall of Fame and having spent at least ten years with the Red Sox (Pesky has not been selected for the Hall of Fame).

Pesky was a longtime resident of Boston's North Shore, living in Lynn and then Swampscott, Massachusetts. He was a visible member of the community, making personal appearances for the Red Sox. For years, he was a commercial spokesman on television and radio for a local supplier of doors and windows, JB Sash and Door Company. The commercials were deliberately and humorously corny, with Pesky and the company's owner calling themselves "the Window Boys."

On May 16, 2009 Pesky was given an honorary degree during Salem State College's 199th commencement ceremony. On April, 20, 2012, Boston Red Sox fans celebrated the 100th birthday of Fenway Park, and Johnny Pesky was a participant. He was wheeled out to second base in a wheelchair, aside Bobby Doerr, to join over 200 past Red Sox players and coaches through the decades.

Pesky died on August 13, 2012, at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers, Massachusetts at the age of 92; he was buried next to his wife Ruth, who died in 2005 .