manager Pinky Higgins to the club's vacant post of general manager and personally appointed Pesky as Higgins's replacement. Although the selection of Pesky was a popular choice, the Red Sox were a second division team and notorious as a "country club"—a group of unmotivated players who did what they wanted, when they wanted. In addition, Higgins and Pesky were not particularly close, and the general manager would be accused of undermining Yawkey's hand-picked skipper. A major off-season trade added slugging first baseman Dick Stuart to Pesky's maiden roster, and while Stuart would lead the American League with 118 runs batted in during 1963, he was an atrocious fielder (nicknamed "Dr. Strangeglove" and "Stonefingers") who would constantly defy Pesky's authority and make it difficult for him to control his players. Pesky's 1963 club started quickly. It won 40 of its first 70 games and on June 28 stood only games behind the league-leading Yankees. The team's standout performer, relief pitcher Dick Radatz (converted to the bullpen by Pesky at Seattle in 1961), had saved 12 games and won seven others with a 1.16 earned run average to keep the Red Sox in contention to that point. But the team buckled from poor defense and, apart from Radatz and 20-game-winning starter Bill Monbouquette, lack of pitching depth; it went only 36–55 for the rest of the campaign to finish 76–85 and in seventh place in the ten-team American League. The following year, despite another strong contribution from Radatz and the debut of star 19-year-old rookie outfielder Tony Conigliaro, the 1964 Sox continued to languish in the second division, winning only 70 of the 160 games Pesky managed. With two games left in the season, he was replaced as manager by Billy Herman, the club's third-base coach and a friend of Higgins. Four years with Pittsburgh Pirates Pesky then left the Red Sox for four seasons, and joined the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. From 1965 through 1967, he served as first-base coach for Pirate manager Harry Walker, who had hit the double that scored Enos Slaughter with the winning run in the eighth inning of Game 7 of the 1946 World Series—the play on which Pesky was accused of "holding the ball" on a relay from the outfield, allegedly hesitating as Slaughter made his "mad dash" for home from first base. After Walker's firing in 1967, Pesky managed the Bucs' Triple-A farm club, the