Son of ex-Sox player arrested in drug raid

The 44-year-old son of former Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall was arrested Tuesday after police found more than $100,000 worth of marijuana plants growing in his Hanover home, law enforcement authorities said yesterday.

Police raided the home of Christopher Piersall at about 6 a.m., arresting him on charges of cultivating, distributing, and manufacturing marijuana, and of trafficking more than 50 pounds of the drug.

Police seized more than 175 plants from the basement, detectives said.

Hanover police, with assistance from Marshfield detectives, had been investigating Christopher Piersall for several months, Marshfield Police Lieutenant Robert Wright said.

They subpoenaed his electric bills and found his household was using an unusually large amount of electricity. Wright said investigators later scanned the King Street house with an infrared sensing device, which detected high-intensity lights, commonly used to grow marijuana, in the basement.

Piersall was arraigned Tuesday in Plymouth District Court and was ordered held on $10,000 bail, said Bridget Norton Middleton, a spokeswoman for the Plymouth district attorney's office. He is scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial conference Dec. 9.

Neighbors said Piersall's house has for years seemed vacant, its yard overgrown. Still, they were surprised to learn about the raid.

''We were horrified," said Stephen Carroll, of King Street. ''It didn't look like anyone lived there for years . . . it was bizarre."

Jimmy Piersall played for the Red Sox from 1950 to 1958, and is perhaps best known as the subject of the movie ''Fear Strikes Out," based on a book he wrote about his struggles with bipolar disorder. In 1952, his season ended prematurely when he suffered a nervous breakdown, according to his book.