RED SOX Pesky carries heavy heart

After nearly losing his wife, the former player will be back at spring training.
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) -- Johnny Pesky's smile always lit up spring training. Well into his 80s, he still hit grounders to infielders. He shouted encouragement to young players and talked baseball with anyone who would listen.
Now, he says, he cries a lot.
The Boston Red Sox began spring training without Ted Williams' old teammate because of someone he loves even more than the game. His 82-year-old wife, Ruthie, had a heart attack last month and spent two weeks in the hospital before returning home.
"If something ever happened to her, it would destroy me," Pesky said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press this week.
Staying home
So he stayed back in the cold and snow outside his front door in Swampscott, Mass., with part of his broken heart beating under the warmth and sun of Fort Myers.
"It gave me an empty feeling not to be there," Pesky said Tuesday. "But my wife and I, we've been married 60 years and we always had a great relationship. I know when I was sick she was here for me, so now she's sick and I'm here for her."
He's 85 now, old enough to be the great-grandfather of many of the players in camp. But he's still young enough to put his arm around a 10-year-old fan wearing a Red Sox cap and eagerly pose for a picture.
Last October, tears of joy glistened in his eyes when Boston won its first World Series championship since 1918, the year before he was born. A few months later, his wife woke up at about 2 a.m. with chest pains. The tears came back.
"It tests your patience," he said. "I sit here thinking about things and start crying."
When the Red Sox held their first official spring training workout on Feb. 18, the annual sight of Pesky sitting in a folding chair outside the clubhouse with his fungo bat between his legs and signing autographs was just a memory.
Fans missed him. So did the players.
"I noticed it immediately. Where's Pesky?" Red Sox captain Jason Varitek said. "He's an inspiration. It's just joy. It's joy to see him. It's a joy to talk to him. He's just a joy to be around."
Coming back
On Monday, he will be.
His wife is well enough for him to go to spring training, and encouraged him to return to his beloved Red Sox even though she can't go as she usually does. Nurses stay with her around the clock, and their adopted son David "has been great," Pesky said.
"She had her breakfast this morning," he said Thursday in another telephone interview. "Everything's under control, but she's weak."
A moment later, he asked, "Are they playing today?"
They were -- a 2-1 Red Sox loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Pesky knows the trip will be good for him. He needs a break and will be with people who have missed him and are ready to cheer him up -- and be cheered up.
"He draws attention without saying a word," said reliever Alan Embree, a fellow Oregonian. "You want to go up and say to him, 'How you doing Johnny,' because you know something good is generally going to come out. Then you also want to be there for him when he is going through a time like this."
A humble man, Pesky is grateful that John Henry's ownership group kept him on when it took over in 2002. He pokes fun at himself -- often at his large nose -- and takes others' jabs well.
"The team will want to fine him for reporting late," Red Sox vice president Mike Port joked. "I'm sure it will be quickly forgiven."
Doing it all
Pesky's official title is special assignment instructor. He is in his 36th straight year with the Red Sox and his 53rd in all with the team as player, manager, coach, broadcaster, advertising salesman and icon.
Kevin Youkilis was a 22-year-old minor league third baseman when he first met Pesky in 2001.
"He'd always say, 'Come on, get a hit here,' little things like that," Youkilis said. "He's an ambassador of the game. He still loves it. How many guys have a foul pole named after them?"
That would be Pesky's Pole, the nickname for the right-field foul pole at Fenway Park. It got that name from Boston pitcher Mel Parnell after Pesky hit a ball just by it, one of his six homers at Fenway.
He's also a living link with Red Sox tradition -- a reminder of all the great players who helped build it and an example to current Boston players who enjoy his stories.
"I love hearing about Joe DiMaggio taking him out at second base," first baseman Kevin Millar said. "He reminds me of my grandfather. I know I wish I could be like him."
Pesky did make it to the White House on March 2 when President Bush honored the Red Sox as champions. The formal photo hanging in the Red Sox clubhouse shows Bush and Red Sox players wearing dark suits. At the right end of the first row, next to Varitek, a short man with carefully combed gray hair stands with his hands jammed in the pockets of his beige trenchcoat.
For one day, Pesky was back with his team.