Uniform & Team History
Johnny Pesky’s name is synonymous with the Boston Red Sox, for whom he worked for more than 60 years as a player, coach, manager, broadcaster and goodwill ambassador. He was a .308 lifetime hitter and had three 200-hit seasons. Later in life, he was a longtime coach in the Oldtime Baseball Game.
Oldtime Game History
This uniform was added to our collection for the 1999 game and worn by Pesky as a coach. He returned to our game over the years wearing his own Red Sox uniform, asking that a player wear our throwback uniform. Junior Medina of Stonehill College, who wore it in 2001, went on to play professionally for Adirondack of the Northern League. The uniform took on an international flavor in 2007 when it was worn by Masakazu Ezure, who had pitched for Waseda University in Tokyo. Ezure, who was in Boston covering Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka for a Tokyo television station, struck out the side in his one inning on the mound.
A new version of this uniform was added to the game beginning in 2010 and was worn by Mike Del Ponte of Bryant University.
Johnny Pesky died on August 13, 2012, the day of the 19th annual Oldtime Baseball Game. A decision was made that Johnny would have wanted his uniform to be used, and it was. Doing the honors was James Mulry of West Roxbury, Mass., an incoming freshman at Northeastern University, who also wore it in 2013, ’14 and ’15. Mulry gained greater fame in the spring of 2014 when he registered back-to-back strikeouts of David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia during the Huskies’ annual exhibition game against the Red Sox.
In 2024, Tyler Korchin, a sophomore pitcher at Xaverian Brothers High School, wore this uniform when he made his Oldtime Baseball Game debut. What made the moment special was that Tyler was joined on the field by his father, Todd Korchin, a former outfielder at Northeastern University who played in our game from 1997 to 2001, and again in 2010 as the inaugural recipient of the Greg Montalbano Award. Playing left field during the inning his son pitched, Todd wore the 1939 No. 9 Ted Williams uniform he wore in 2000 when he was named MVP of the game.
Due to the high number of players who played in the 2024 game, both the old and new Johnny Pesky uniforms were used. Longtime Oldtime Baseball Game pitcher Aidan Freeburg wore the original Pesky jersey in ’24.
Also worn by:
(Original uniform): Bo Delduca, UMass/Dartmouth (’02); Mike Cosenza, Fordham University (’03); Josh Farkes, University of Richmond (’04); Chris Bodnar, Amherst College (’05); Jim Cody, coach (’06), Aidan Freeburg, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (alum), 2024.
(Replacement uniform): Daveson Perez, Boston Red Sox media relations specialist, (’17-18); Joe Bova, University of Southern Maine, (’22-23); Tyler Korchin, Xaverian Brothers High School (’24).