The Sports Archives Blog

Ask professional athletes and sports fanatics, and they will tell you that numbers are a big deal. For some, a number is just a number, but for athletes they hold special meaning. For example, if Boston heavy hitter Carl Yastrzemski’s number 8 is turned sideways, it resembles the symbol for infinity. Some thought this explained, in part, his extraordinary skill. So how do the athletes get their numbers, and what happens to the numbers when they’re finished with them?

Baseball

Branch Rickey

The first photographic evidence of numbers being used in baseball is in a 1909 photograph of Cuban pitching star Jose Mendez. He wore the number 12 on his sleeve. The Cleveland Indians became the first major league team to try uniform numbers in a similar fashion to those being used in hockey and football. It lasted only a short time, and a brief attempt the following year was unsuccessful. In 1923, St. Louis Cardinals manager, Branch Rickey, tried uniform numbers. People across the country ridiculed his efforts. It was not until the mid 1930s that major league baseball made uniform numbers uniform.

Now, depending upon availability, major league baseball players choose their own numbers. If the number happens to be unavailable, players are not above wheeling and dealing to get the number they want. Rickey Henderson paid Toronto’s Turner Ward $25,000 for rights to the number 24, and Roger Clemens gave Carlos Delgado of the Blue Jays a $15,000 Rolex watch in order wear the number 21. The deals made to procure preferred numbers sometimes take strange turns. In 1991 relief pitcher Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams traded Phillies John Kruk two cases of beer for the number 28. When Carlton Fisk moved from Boston to Chicago, he couldn’t get the number 27, so he played with the number 72 to symbolize a turn around in his career.

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