My father came over to the United States from Stliit, Yugoslavia, some time after World War I. He was with a bunch of guys who emigrated to America so they could get jobs to feed their families. The grandfather of the old Tigers pitcher, Mickey Lolich, was one of the guys in that group.

The route my father took was into New York, a stop in St. Louis, and then on to Oregon, because the logging camps were hiring people out there for the saw mills. My father got a job, along with a number of his cronies that he came over with.

I was born in 1919 in Portland, Oregon, which was a booming city of about 400,000 at the time. There were eight high schools. When we were kids growing up and going to school, we were considered Austrians. Later on we were considered Croatians. My Christian given name was John Michael Paveskovich.

“Pesky” was the nickname the kids came up with for me and called me. I went by that. It was kind of catchy, and it caught on. There was a writer in the Portland area by the name of Gregory, who said, “With a name like Paveskovich, you’re going to have a tough time getting it into box scores.” That also helped convince me that “Pesky” was the name to use.

I had a wonderful time as a kid. My parents were good, not overly strict. When things had to be done, they let you know where you stood. I had great brothers and sisters, and they all helped out.

The school furnished us with bats. We got books and read about the major league players. The first glove I had was a catcher’s glove, even though I was a small guy and couldn’t be a catcher. My favorite player became the great catcher Mickey Cochrane, because of the catcher’s glove. I had a poster of him. Eventually, I got around to playing the infield and just played ball all the time. I started reading a lot about Charlie Gehringer, who was an infielder. Then I got a poster of him, and he became my favorite player.

I had read about superstitions and rituals players had. Quite a few of the kids I played with had some of those habits, too. But I never had anything serious like a lot of guys. Only small things. Like if our team’s dugout was on the first base side, I would make sure I stepped on first base coming off the field from my shortstop position.

I never had a big dream of trying to make the major leagues. At that time the Pacific Coast League was close by. It really was quite the league. I thought that it would just be fine if I could make it there. But the more I played baseball, the more I dreamed of playing in the major leagues.

I played a little American Legion first. Then in high school I did all right. I made a couple of high school teams. I can’t even remember being an All Star, but they tell me that I was.

When I was in high school, I was the clubhouse boy for a number of years for the Portland Beavers in the Pacific Coast League. The great Yankee pitcher Spud Chandler was on the team on a rehab, and I got to know him pretty well. He would tell me stories about the Yankees and the big league cities, and that whetted my appetite for the majors even more. Four guys who I liked a lot played in the Pacific Coast League — the three DiMaggio brothers and Bobby Doerr. Little did I dream that I would be on the Red Sox with two of those guys later on.

A few of those high school summers I played semipro baseball. One year I went up to Bend, Oregon. Another summer I stayed in a lumber camp in Silverton and played for the Silverton Red Sox. We competed against teams in a couple of leagues. A guy by the name of Bill McGinnis was the general manager of the camp and also the sponsor of that semipro team. He took good care of all of us, even though we were a mixed crew with kids like me out of high school, a couple out of college, and a couple of veteran players.

In Silverton, I earned a little extra money working as a groundskeeper. I was out there early fixing up the batter’s box getting it ready for the six o’clock game of a tournament. My team was playing in the game after that. I was stripped down to my waist marking off home plate when this well-dressed guy came over.

“When does the Silverton club play?”

“They’re playing the second game,” I told him.

I just continued to fix the box, but he just stood there and continued to talk.

“I represent the St. Louis Browns,” he said. “Do you play ball?”

“Yes, I do.” I was really trying to get the batter’s box ready for the game and didn’t have that much time to talk. But the guy continued to ask questions about how much I liked baseball, what position I played, what my name was.

When I gave him the name, “Johnny Pesky,” that did it.

“Jeez,” he said, “I’m here to check you out.”

And he did. He was just one of a lot of them who came to look me and others over. There were a lot of scouts out there from different teams.

My father did not know anything about baseball. He knew about bocci. A mixture of Italians and Slavs played it with him. He spoke very little English. He read the Slav papers but could not decipher the English ones. My brothers and sisters helped him out. When the scouts came to talk to my parents about me, either my older sister or brother would sit there and would more or less interpret for them.

Ernie Johnson, from the Babe Ruth era, was a scout with the Red Sox. He impressed me. He spent a lot of time in my home talking with my parents. He made an offer.

The guy from St. Louis who came to see me play at Silverton where I was the groundskeeper also came around. He offered more money than the Red Sox did.

But my mother said, “Mr. Johnson, Boston, is where you are going, John.” She was impressed with him and the Red Sox. She really picked my ball club for me. I was given $500 to sign. This was late thirties, early forties. There was no money around, so that was good money.

The Red Sox paid me $150 a month for my first year in the minor leagues. The contract I signed said that if I stayed in the organization for two years I would get another thousand dollars. But they were nice. After the first year, they gave me the thousand dollars.

After I signed as a pro, I had a pretty good year my first season with Rocky Mount in 1940 in the old Piedmont League. The old outfielder Heinie Manush, who had played seventeen seasons in the majors, was my manager. It was Heinie who had a great influence on how I played the game. He was a great guy to be around who knew his baseball. He did a couple of corrections with me.

The next year, 1941, I went to Louisville. The next year I was with Boston in spring training in Sarasota. Eddie Pellagrini, who had played in San Diego in 1941, and I battled for the shortstop job.

Manager Joe Cronin played Eddie one day, and he played me the next. He gave us the same opportunity. I was doing pretty well. Eddie was doing okay, too. Finally, cut-down time was coming. Joe sent Pelly to Louisville. But he never did tell me I had made the ball club.

We were in Kentucky playing an exhibition game because we played exhibition games coming north. We played against Cincinnati. Johnny Vander Meer was pitching. I hit a ball to right-centerfield for a triple. Cronin came over to me, and he said, “Kid, you just made the ball club.”

I got to play. Joe let me play. That was how it all started in 1942.

Being in Boston, being in Fenway was just wonderful. We played the old Boston Braves, a city series. It was one game at Fenway and one game at the old Braves Field. We played one of the games on a Sunday. The season was going to open on a Tuesday. The day was cold and rainy and snowy. This was in the middle of April. I made four errors and felt just terrible about it. I thought Cronin was going to call me in the next day and send me to either Scranton or Louisville.

But he didn’t say anything to me. The season started. I hit behind Dominic DiMaggio and in front of Ted Williams. I hung on Ted and Dominic’s coattails. I was at shortstop. I made sure I got in front of every ball and tried to catch or knock it down. I think I went about eighteen games before I made an error.

My first major league game was April 14, 1942. My first hit in the big leagues was a single off Phil Marchildon, a pitcher with the Athletics who won seventeen games that year.

The first time I saw Fenway Park it was dark and dreary. That was for the exhibition game against the Braves. I didn’t even look around much. I was mainly concerned about playing as well as I could and about keeping warm.

But Opening Day was when I saw it, in a matter of speaking, for the first time. It was a beautiful day. I came up the runway up the three steps and looked out from the dugout. It felt I was going into paradise. It was an old park even at that time, but it was very well kept, clean and nice. And right in the middle of the city.

That rookie season of 1942 I finished one-two with Williams in the batting title race. But no contest there. He was such a great hitter. I hit .331. He hit .356. I wasn’t even close, even though it was still one-two. I led the American League in hits with 205 — the first of three straight years that I did that. The guys called me “Needlenose.” They said that was an affectionate nickname. They could have called me whatever they wanted. It was just wonderful being in the majors.

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