Green: You can count on this number being retired

I was always proud of Boston’s stringent rules about which Red Sox players could have their numbers retired: 10 years with the club, retired with the team, and elected to the Hall of Fame.
And I liked the lore of unofficially safeguarded numbers, like Tony Conigliaro’s 25, which always seems to end up on the back of some respected veteran, or Jim Rice’s 14, which hasn’t been seen on a Red Sox jersey since the slugger retired. I enjoyed the cocktail party game of noting just how quickly the Red Sox reassigned Johnny Damon’s number to Daisuke Matsuzaka, observing how apparently reticent they’ve been to hand out Nomar’s 5 and Roger’s 21, and guessing what wink-and-nod restrictions the Red Sox might one day place on Jason Varitek’s 33.

I also thought the strictness of the rules saved us from ourselves. I wasn’t worried about tacky, tit-for-tat backscratching, such as the rumors that Wade Boggs had promised to head to Cooperstown in a Tampa Bay cap if they’d promise to hang up the number (12) he wore with them. No, I was worried we’d throw away the ultimate honor the Fenway Faithful can bestow, granting it to unworthy candidates in the heat of the impassioned moment. If the written record is any guide, Red Sox fans include a disproportionate number of history buffs, literary types, and Classics majors, which, combined with our penchant for both narcissism and nostalgia, seemed to me like a number-retiring bonanza just waiting to happen. Lift the restrictions and Fenway’s right field would quickly outstrip Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park, with its 17 retired numbers. No, I reasoned, best to keep the rules in place and Spike Owen’s number active.

But now Boston’s decided to change the rules — or at least, just this once, to break them. This weekend, Johnny Pesky’s 6 will take its place between Joe Cronin’s 4 and Carl Yastrzemski’s 8, as the former infielder greets his 89th year. The man who never retired will get to see his number do so. And despite my staunch support for the rules, I couldn’t be happier. Pesky’s career with Boston as a player and his decades of service to the team since make it impossible for any thinking, feeling Red Sox fan to feel otherwise.

Cooperstown’s a lovely museum, but it only knows how to do one thing well: count career numbers. It has never been good at recognizing that there are a number of ways to make a career count. So though his three 200-hit seasons and career .394 OBP are certainly nothing to blush at, no one argues that Pesky is a Hall of Famer.
But you know what? There are 286 of them. There’s only one Johnny Pesky.

Sarah Green also writes for UmpBump.com and mlbtraderumors.com, and can be reached at sarah@umpbump.com.