Pesky's Pole, commonly referred to as The Pesky Pole, is the nickname for the right field foul pole at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. It is named after Johnny Pesky, who played second base, shortstop and third base for the Red Sox from 1942 to 1952, except for 1943-45 during World War II. The pole sits only 302 feet (92 meters) away from home plate. Like the measurement of the left-field line at Fenway Park, this has been disputed. Aerial shots show it to be noticeably shorter than the (actual) 302 foot line in right, and Pesky himself has been quoted as estimating it to be "around 295 feet."

According to Pesky, former teammate and Sox broadcaster Mel Parnell named the pole after Pesky won a game for Parnell in 1948 with a home run down the short right field line, just around the pole. However, Pesky hit just one home run in a game pitched by Parnell, a two-run shot in the first inning of a game against Detroit played on June 11, 1950. The game was eventually won by the visiting Tigers in the 14th inning on a three-run shot by Tigers right fielder Vic Wertz and Parnell earned a no-decision that day.

William Joseph "Bill" Buckner (born December 14, 1949) is a former Major League Baseball first baseman. Despite winning a batting crown in 1980, representing the Chicago Cubs at the All-Star Game the following season and accumulating over 2,700 hits in his twenty-year career, he is best remembered for a fielding error during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets, a play that has since been prominently entrenched into American sports lore.

Bill Buckner was born in Vallejo, California and grew up in American Canyon, California. Buckner graduated from Napa High School in 1968 after playing on the school's baseball and football teams. While playing football, he was a two-time All-State wide receiver Coaches and also achieved All-America honors twice. Buckner was selected by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second round of the 1968 Major League Baseball Draft. His friend, Bobby Valentine, was the Dodgers' first round pick. Upon signing with the Dodgers, Buckner was assigned to the Ogden Dodgers of the Pioneer Baseball League, where he played for manager Tommy Lasorda. He also briefly attended the University of Southern California and Arizona State University and became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity while a farmhand with the Dodgers.

John Michael Pesky (born John Michael Paveskovich September 27, 1919), nicknamed "The Needle," is a retired American professional baseball player, manager and coach. He was a shortstop and third baseman during a ten-year Major League playing career, appearing in 1,270 games played in 1942 and from 1946-1954 for three different teams. He missed the 1943–1945 seasons while serving in World War II. Johnny Pesky is of Croat origin.

Pesky has been associated with the Boston Red Sox for 61 of his 73 years in baseball — from 1940 through June 3, 1952; 1961 through 1964; and continuously since 1969. Pesky also managed the Red Sox from 1963–1964, and in September 1980. His biography is Mr. Red Sox by Bill Nowlin, published by Rounder Books.

A left-handed hitter who threw right-handed, Pesky was a tough man for pitchers to strike out. He was the first AL player to score 6 runs in a 9 inning game. As a hitter, he specialized in getting on base, leading the American League in base hits three times - his first three seasons in the majors, in which he collected over 200 hits each year — and was among the top ten in on base percentage six times while batting .307 in 4,745 at bats as a Major Leaguer. He was also an excellent bunter who led the league in sacrifice hits in 1942.

Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (b. 31 August 1913, Oldland Common, Bristol ) OBE, FRS is an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.

Lovell's childhood hobbies and interests included cricket and music, mainly the piano. He attended Kingswood Grammar School, now Kingsfield Comprehensive.

He studied physics at the University of Bristol, obtaining a Ph.D. in 1936. At this time he also received lessons from Raymond Jones, a teacher at Bath Technical School and later organist at Bath Abbey. The church organ was one of the main loves of his life, apart from science. He worked in the cosmic ray research team at the University of Manchester until the outbreak of World War II, during which he worked for the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) developing radar systems to be installed in aircraft, among them H2S, for which he received an OBE in 1946.

He attempted to continue his studies of cosmic rays with an ex-military radar detector unit, but suffered much background interference from the Electric trams on Manchester's Oxford Road. He moved his equipment to a more remote location, one which was free from such electrical interference, and where he established the Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey in Cheshire. It was an outpost of the University's botany department. In the course of his experiments he was able to show that radar echoes could be obtained from daytime meteor showers as they entered the Earth's atmosphere and ionised the surrounding air. With University funding he constructed the then-largest steerable radio telescope in the world, which now bears his name - the Lovell Telescope. Over 50 years later, it remains a productive radio telescope, now mostly operated as part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network interferometric arrays of radio telescopes.

Melvin Lloyd Parnell (June 13, 1922 – March 20, 2012) was a Major League Baseball left-handed starting pitcher.

Parnell spent his entire ten-year career with the Boston Red Sox (1947–1956), compiling a 123-75 record with 732 strikeouts, a 3.50 earned run average, 113 complete games, 20 shutouts, and 1752.2 innings pitched in 289 games (232 as a starter). He has the third-highest career winning percentage for a left-hander in Fenway Park (minimum of more than 25 decisions), at 71-30 (.703).

Parnell enjoyed his best season in 1949 when he went 25-7, leading the league in wins, ERA (2.77), complete games (27) and innings (295.1). He was the starting pitcher for the American League in that year's All-Star Game and was selected again in 1951.

After two 18-win seasons in 1950 and 1951, and a 12-12 record in 1952, Parnell went 21-8 in 1953 with a 3.06 ERA and a career-high 136 strikeouts. He pitched a no-hitter on July 14, 1956 against the Chicago White Sox at Fenway, winning 4-0. The no-hitter was the first for a Red Sox pitcher since Howard Ehmke in 1923, though this would prove the final highlight of his career, which would come to a premature end after the 1956 season, due to a torn muscle in his pitching arm. It would take 52 years until another Red Sox lefty would throw a no-hitter, a feat accomplished by Jon Lester in 2008.