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Editor's note: What can one say about Red Sox hall of famer Johnny Pesky that won't sound cliché? He is the dean of the Boston Red Sox, an ambassador of the game from another time, before steroids, before journeyman ballplayers were millionaires. Pesky played ten seasons in the Major Leagues, his first eight with the Red Sox. He managed his home team during the 1962 and 1963 seasons and briefly as their interim skipper in 1980. If the Boston Red Sox are America's team, then Johnny Pesky is the great uncle to not just Red Sox Nation, but the whole greater nation of baseball. In Diary of a Red Sox Season 2007, he teams with Boston sports journalist and HOFMAG.com writer Maureen Mullen to hit a homer inside the right field pole named in his honor. In the following excerpt Pesky and Mullen track the Red Sox one year ago and conclude with their World Championship against the Colorado Rockies ten months later. December 14, 2006 – There is no real off-season for the Boston Red Sox. Today's press conference announcing the signing of Japanese pitching sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka is evidence of that. In addition to the $51.1 million posting fee the Red Sox paid for the rights to negotiate with him, Matsuzaka agreed to terms with the Red sox on a six-year, $52 million contract. It is safe to say Fenway Park has never hosted a press conference like this one before. Hundreds of local, national, and international media representatives arrive hours before the 5:00 p.m. press conference to claim a seat in the EMC Club inside the ballpark. Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino is also on hand to welcome the Sox's newest international sensation. Scores of satellite trucks clog the narrow streets outside the ancient ballpark. Red Sox principal owner John Henry called it a "joyous day in New England."  Partners with the pen Johnny Pesky and Maureen Mullen confer at Fenway Park. For Johnny Pesky, the Red Sox legend, the day signals the start of a season unlike any other in his time with the Olde Towne Team – a time that spans parts of eight decades. Pesky, who gave up three playing years – 1943, 1944, and 1945 – of his career to serve in the navy during World War II, has often been asked his thoughts on Japanese players coming to the United States. On Matsuzaka's big day, he had nothing but good things to say. I've never seen anything like it. I think I've seen a lot of press conferences in my time, but nothing like this. There were cameras and flash bulbs everywhere. I thought I was on a movie lot. It was great. You couldn't get up that street. You couldn't move. I wanted to stick around, but I had to leave to take a driving test. I was there when he arrived. I wanted to see him so I waited as long as I could. Finally, he showed up and went into the ballpark. But, I thought he handled it very well. He seemed very calm, very respectful. I think he's probably used to a lot of attention. It's a big thing, and rightfully so. They say he's the best pitcher to ever come from Japan. So he had a good thing going for him. I thought he handled it very, very well. I like what I saw. He was very genteel. He had humility. He was very polite. He bowed. I wanted to see what he looked like. He's a nice, clean-looking kid. They always say listen to people you trust and everybody I talked to liked him. So that's good enough for me. I don't have any problem with Japanese players coming over here. How could I? My parents came over here to have a better life. That's what they're doing, too. The thing was, where I came from we had a lot of every nationality. You name it, we had it. We had Japanese and Chinese kids in the neighborhood. So, I got to know them. I went to school with them, and the Japanese kids I knew, geez, they were great kids. There were two brothers named Tokami and the Okasakis that lived right in my neighborhood. The Okasakis were twin boys. And the war had been on for six months or so and they went back to Japan. They became flyers and fought in the Japanese Imperial Navy. That's what I heard. And there was the Tokami brothers, Bobby and Ralph. Bobby was a basketball player and Ralph was a baseball player. One went to Oregon State and the other went to Oregon. Those were the days that they put the parents in camps. That was sad. Their parents went in. They were well scrutinized. But they never caused any trouble. I went to school with them. They were my friends. They were in my house, ate my mother's bread. I didn't consider them enemies. I was Catholic. Half of them were Catholics, too. Some of them had the little statues of Buddha in their homes. The Okasaki brothers were the twins, and you had to go up about eight or 10 steps to get to their house. And at the top of the steps they had a Buddha. It was pretty neat. But they were my friends. We went a lot of places together and had no problems. But the sad part of all that was when their parents had to go to internment camps. They separated them there. But in my neighborhood, we weren't separated. We had everyone. We had Japanese, Chinese, Slavs, Germans, Jewish. We had the League of Nations there. And we all got along. It was a different time. Late 30s, early 40s. And most of us were in school.
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