the team's skipper, Ed Nottle, was fired in June. Managerial record Later years Intermittently, Pesky was allowed to sit on the Red Sox bench during games, but three times was prevented from the task—once by his own general manager, Dan Duquette, a second time when the Baltimore Orioles complained to MLB, and a third time in March 2007, when Major League Baseball announced it would enforce limitations that only six coaches could be in uniform during a game. As an instructor, Pesky was ineligible. On April 3, 2007, the North Shore Spirit, a now-defunct team in the Independent Can-Am League, in Lynn, Massachusetts, invited Pesky to sit in their dugout—and serve as an honorary coach—anytime he wanted. When the Red Sox returned to the World Series in 2004 to face the Cardinals for a third time, Pesky was officially a Special Assignment Instructor and watched the final out of Game 4, where the Red Sox sealed a sweep and their first World Series win in 86 years, from the visiting clubhouse at Busch Stadium. In the celebration that immediately followed, he was embraced by members of the Curse-breaking, title-winning Sox such as Tim Wakefield, Curt Schilling and Kevin Millar as a living representative of past Red Sox stars whose teams had fallen short of winning the Fall Classic, at times literally at the final hurdle. As John Powers wrote for the Boston Globe, "Pesky was the stand-in for all of the Towne Teamers who'd gotten to the World Series and fell short. For teammate Ted Williams, who wept in the clubhouse after batting .200 in 1946. For Jim Lonborg, who won two games with brilliant pitching in 1967 but was battered on two days' rest in the finale. For Carl Yastrzemski, who played on two teams that lost the Series in the seventh game. And for Bill Buckner, who had the grounder go between his legs in 1986." He played a poignant and prominent role in the ceremony in which the World Series Championship Rings were handed out (April 11, 2005, before the Red Sox home season opener against the Yankees) – and he himself was awarded the World Series ring that had eluded him as a player and manager. Bill Simmons, who was present that day, wrote for ESPN in a column that was republished in Now I Can Die In Peace that Pesky received the biggest cheer as