When was the last time you saw a Major League pitcher with a single-digit number on his back?
Is this just tradition?
Usually pitchers have 2-digit numbers on the high end (30-50).
Doc Gooden was number 7 IIRC. I don’t watch baseball anymore though. Haven’t in 8 years or so.
You don’t RC so good. Doc wore “16.”
The lowest Met pitcher’s number I can find here, http://www.mbtn.net/list.htm
, a pretty authoriatative website, is Cory Lidle’s 11. The digits of Doc’s number do add up to 7, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with your memory.
I believe that when numbering started, it was traditional to give the number of your place in the batting order. This is why Babe Ruth had 3.
I guess that after the first nine, the numbering became a free for all.
Pitchers generally (but not always) have high uniform numbers because it has always been so. You’ll also notice that players numbers 1 tend to always be shortstops and second basemen, or that a lot of sluggers have lusted after #44 (because it was Henry Aaron’s number.) The Red Sox went four decades in which every regular first basemen was #3. Number tradition is strong in baseball.
Pitchers tend to be amassed in training camp and are somewhat likelier to break through to the majors unexpectedly, too, which makes it likelier you’ll see a big leaguer with a honkin’ big uniform number. High uniform numbers tend to be assigned in camp to players who are not expected to make the big league club that year; having a low number is a prestigious thing, so you don’t give #7 to a rookie unless he’s making the team for sure. Pitchers, however, are a little unpredictable. Generally speaking, if a player is a surprise (or emergency) addition, it’ll be a pitcher; pitchers get injured a lot, so they chew through them.
Due to tradition, hitters who start out with high “rookie numbers” will sometimes replace them with low numbers after they become established major leaguers. I can think of a dozen really good players who started out with numbers like 40 or 51, and switched to 8 or 14 or something. Pitchers never seem to do this.
A pitcher for the Texas Rangers wore number 6 a year or two ago. I can’t think of his name right now. He was traded to the Rangers mid-season and his original number was not available so he switched to the very unstable number 6. Who ever it was he is not here anymore.
It was Rob Bell in the 2001 season.
It was Rob Bell in the 2001 season.
RickJay:
Well, Bret Saberhagen started with number 31, and switched to 18 a few years later. Not a VERY low number, I’ll admit, but still a move down from his “rookie” number.
Gooden wore 11 with the Yankees. Also not a real high number.
Zev Steinhardt
The Yankees did start their uniform numbering with the practice of numbering the players by their position in the regular batting order. And the pitchers, who would change from day to day, got the extra numbers.
The Dodgers and Cardinals started to standardize their numbering system for uniforms when they would invited over 100 players to spring training. To help keep them straight, certain positions got certain ranges of numbers.
Pitchers would be at the end because there were always more of those players in camp than others.
Catchers, the position with the fewest players, usually got the very low numbers.
Incidentally, I did some research and the “Yankee lineup number” thing is true. The first Yankee to ever wear a uniform number to the plate, Earle Combs, went up there wearing #1. The #2 hitter, Mark Koenig, wore #2, and so on down to #7 Leo Durocher; at that point it got a little mixed up. Catcher Bill Dickey was #10, for some reason, and #9 went to someone named Benny Bengough.
Did some quick research, and only two pitchers on current MLB rosters have single-digit numbers. One is with the Cincinnati Reds (probably a recent callup) and the other is a Toronto Blue Jay. Don’t have the names handy, but I used ESPN’s rosters to look.
This is a bit of a hijack, but what the hell. I didn’t know that part about the Yankees having the uniforms match the place in the order, but at least it makes some sense, and fits baseball right along with other sports which have their own interesting uniform numbering traditions:
In American football, players at a given position are typically restricted in the uniform numbers they are legally allowed to wear. This is especially true in the NFL, where has gone to such extremes that back in the day Brian Bosworth (remember him?) tried to be listed as a defensive back on the roster instead of a linebacker so that he could wear the same number (44) he had worn in college. They wouldn’t let him do it, and gave him 55 instead. Look what it did to him; he hardly played in the NFL before being released.
In college basketball, players may only wear numbers with the digits 0-5. The rationale is that then when the referees make hand signals to the scorekeeper as to who committed a foul, they can indicate the player using only one hand. In my view it’s really just tradition; the professionals use all ten digits and seem to get by OK.
Soccer, which has probably the strangest numbering tradition, used to designate each player’s position by a number, just like in baseball. The goalkeeper was 1, the defenders were 2, 3, and 4, all the way up to the forwards who were 9, 10, and 11 (in the old days there were actually typically only two defenders and five forwards, but ignore that for now). If a team fielded a different player in the next game, he wouldn’t have a new number, like 12, but would be given the number his position demanded, just as if the team was playing its first game. Players could, and did, wear different numbers throughout the season whenever they played a different position. A fan watching the players’ numbers would only be able to determine what position a player played, not who the player was. And this system persisted for nearly a hundred years; it’s only within about the last ten or fifteen years that they’ve gone to the more sensible system of having players identified by the same number all season. However, you still often see a team’s top goalkeeper wear #1 and the playmaker is sometimes called a “#10” even if he doesn’t wear that number.
What was this thread about again?
In fact, it was the lowest number available. The Yankees have numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 (twice), 9, and 10 retired. 2 is currently taken by Derek Jeter, and manager Joe Torre wears 6. So I think the Yanks will actually be OUT of single-digit numbers after those two are gone (assuming Jeter continues to produce for the Yankees).
Rookie pitchers called up during the year seem to get assigned high numbers, generally in the 60s. That’s my observation anyway.
Just out of curiosity, who are the Yankee players that had those numbers?
Remember, though, that unlike the NFL, there aren’t specific number areas assigned to specific positions (e.g., single-digits for kickers and QBs, 80s for wide receivers, etc.).
I’m sure it’s conventional wisdom to assign a higher number to a pitcher, but that pitcher can change uniform numbers any time he wishes - provided the number he wants is readily available. That is, either the new number’s not retired or being worn by a current player. And if it is being worn by a current player, often that player will swap numbers with the other player.
1 - Billy Martin
3 - Babe Ruth
4 - Lou Gehrig
5 - Joe DiMaggio
7 - Mickey Mantle
8 - Bill Dickey, Yogi Berra
9 - Roger Maris
10 - Phil Rizzuto
15 - Thurman Munson
16- Whitey Ford
23 - Don Mattingly
32 - Elston Howard
37 - Casey Stengel
44 - Reggie Jackson
49 - Ron Guidry
Mariano Rivera presently wears 42 and that number will be retired when he leaves the Yankees, but it will be in honor of Jackie Robinson.
I looked up the lowest uniform numbers for pitchers and all other players on each ML team. I only looked at active rosters, not 40-man rosters. Here they are, with the pitchers listed first for each team:
Anaheim: 34 Aaron Sele, 2 Adam Kennedy
Arizona: 24 John Patterson, 3 Carlos Baerga
Atlanta: 26 Will Cunnane, 1 Rafael Furcal
Baltimore: 13 Rodrigo Lopez, 1 Brian Roberts
Boston: 19 John Burkett, 2 Damian Jackson
Chicago (N): 22 Mark Prior, 1 Augie Ojeda
Chicago (A) : 20 Jon Garland, 5 Carl Everett
Cincinnati: 32 Danny Graves, 4 Ray Olmedo
Cleveland: 27 Jack Cressend, 1 Casey Blake
Colorado: 16 Jose Jimenez, 1 Pablo Ozuna
Detroit: 14 Matt Anderson, 4 Bobby Higginson
Florida: 21 Josh Beckett, 1 Luis Castillo
Houston: 13 Billy Wagner, 2 Mitch Meluskey
Kansas City: 19 Brian Anderson, 2 Brent Mayne
Los Angeles: 10 Hideo Nomo, 3 Cesar Izturis
Milwaukee: 15 Ben Sheets, 2 Bill Hall
Minnesota: 18 Eddie Guardado, 2 Luis Rivas
Montreal: 24 Tomo Ohka, 1 Jose Macias
New York (N): 17 Jason Anderson, 3 Vance Wilson
New York (A): 13 Antonio Osuna, 2 Derek Jeter
Oakland: 15 Tim Hudson, 2 Chris Singleton
Philadelphia: 13 Turk Wendell, 3 Todd Pratt
Pittsburgh: 27 Josh Fogg, 2 Jack Wilson
San Diego: 16 Luther Hackman, 1 Ramon Vazquez
San Francisco: 29 Jason Schmidt, 1 Neifi Perez
Seattle: 17 Shigetoshi Hasegawa, 1 Rey Sanchez
St. Louis: 13 Jeff Fassero, 0 Kerry Robsinson
Tampa Bay: 17 Joe Kennedy, 1 Antonio Perez
Texas: 14 Ismael Valdes, 3 Alex Rodriguez
Toronto: 7 Josh Towers, 2 Dave Berg