The Assault on Johnny P. Relived

Major league baseball is still plagued with problems. Gary Matthews insists that he never took HGH, despite receiving it from a pharmacy that's hip deep in the doping scandal. Fans are up in arms over the exclusive MLB/DirecTV deal for the Extra Innings package they're used to getting on cable. Pete Rose continues to put on an embarrassing show that really is worthy of some Hall of Fame somewhere by trying to turn "I never bet on baseball so it didn't affect my managing" to "I bet on baseball every night so it couldn't've affected my managing." What a spectacle.

Dopers and liars and cheats, oh, my! That's a lot on anybody's plate, no pun intended. So, how does baseball respond to all this?

Just how you would expect them to: by kicking Johnny Pesky out of the dugout.

Gordon Edes reports that once again MLB has gotten back on its' high horse and decided that since the nearly ninety-year-old Pesky is not welcome in the Red Sox dugout. The rules allow for players, manager, and six coaches in uniform and in the dugout, and since Pesky is none of those, he's out. Senior VP for baseball operations Joe Garagiola, Jr. put it this way: "Teams feel with some justification that an extra person could be a potential advantage, an additional set of eyes and ears for a manager. Somebody's job, for example, could be to bear down on the other club's third base coach and pick up signs."

Okay...let's just think about this. Johnny Pesky is eighty-eight years old. What are the chances he is sitting there slyly next to Tito, using his ancient bionic eyes to steal signs? My guess, if anything, is that Pesky is more of a distraction than a potential advantage there in the dugout. But he has been allowed to stay out of respect and affection, and as a symbol of the team's storied past. Because it's not just Johnny Pesky sitting there in the dugout. It's Pesky and Williams and Yaz and the '46 and '67 pennants and the millions of Red Sox fans who have filed through the old park over the past 65 years. Johnny Pesky is a connection, a tangible link to a time not that long past that is captured in the living memory of fewer and fewer of us. It is to be preserved and revered, not callously discarded because it's not in strict observance of the "rules." Joe Jr. comes from a rather storied baseball tradition himself. He should know this without me having to tell him.

Tell you what, Joe. You poll every major league team and ask them if they consider the presence of the iconic old man a threat, and see what they say. I'll betcha not one-not even those arrogant, paranoid Yankees-will tell you they are the least bit worried about Johnny Pesky stealing their signs. If you hear all that and then still kick him out, we'll know then that MLB is more concerned with enforcing arbitrary rules than honoring its' own traditions and memories.

And that would be a shame.