Appreciating the retired single-digit numbers of the New York Yankees

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Number One

Billy Martin, #1 (number retired on August 10, 1986)

It would be difficult to make a statistical argument that Martin should have his number retired as a player or manager of the Yankees. The other players in the single-digit club were far better than Martin ever was and his on-again, off-again career as manager of the Yankees doesn’t come close to the sustained excellence of the Joe Torre years. But the thing about Martin that can’t be argued is that he was a New York Yankee right down to his core.

As a player, Martin lasted 11 years in the big leagues despite having just two season in which he was league average overall (worth at least 2 Wins Above Replacement) and he was never league average as a hitter (career 80 wRC+, meaning 20% below league average as a hitter when league and ballpark are taken into account). He spent his first six full seasons with the Yankees, with a one-year break for military service in 1954, then started his seventh year with the team before being traded away during the season.

Despite his pedestrian career statistics, Martin turned his game up a notch in the World Series. He played in five different Fall Classics and the Yankees won four of them. He hit .333/.371/.566 in the World Series overall. In the Yankees’ six-game victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1953, Martin was 12-for-24 with five extra- base hits. He also made one of the greatest catches in postseason history in 1952 when he came in from playing a deep second base to make a lunging catch, saving the Yankees’ lead in the seventh inning of Game 7.

Martin’s playing career came to an end in 1957 after a much-publicized brawl at the Copacabana nightclub in New York. He had always been a fighter, even back in his days growing up in the San Francisco/Oakland area, where he was an amateur boxer. He also liked to party and after the brawl at the Copa, Yankees general manager George Weiss traded him to the Kansas City A’s.

The next go-around for Billy Martin with the New York Yankees was as a manager. He had success with the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, and Texas Rangers, but always wore out his welcome within a few years. The Yankees hired him in the middle of the 1975 season. He led the team to the AL pennant in 1976, but lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in a four-game sweep. He took them back to the Worlds Series in 1977 and this time they won, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games.

Despite his success in New York during this time, it wasn’t a smooth ride for Martin. He battled with tempestuous owner George Steinbrenner and megastar outfielder Reggie Jackson. Martin oncesaid that Jackson and Steinbrenner deserved each other because “one’s a born liar and the other’s convicted.” That got him fired during the 1978 season and it was the first of five hirings and firings of Martin by Steinbrenner. One can only imagine the Trump-like tweets from Steinbrenner had Twitter been around in the 1970s.

Martin last managed the Yankees in the first part of the 1988 season. The team had a 40-28 record and were just 2.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers, but a four-game losing streak brought down Steinbrenner’s wrath. It wasn’t just the losing streak, though. Martin, even at 60 years old, had shown signs of an out-of-control temper and a drinking problem.

In May, Martin was ejected from a game for arguing with an umpire. While drinking in a topless bar after the game, he got into an argument and a fistfight and ended up with 40 stiches around his left ear. He claimed he had been beaten up by three men, which proved to be a lie.

In late May, general manager Lou Piniella resigned because of repeated difficulties dealing with Martin. The very next day, Martin was ejected for arguing a call and picked up two handfuls of dirt and tossed them at umpire Dale Scott. Martin was also criticized by the pitchers on the Yankees for his bizarre usage patterns, including a stretch where he used 45-year-old left-hander Tommy John three times in five days.

Finally, in June, Martin objected to the activation of catcher Don Slaught from the DL. He didn’t think Slaught was ready and railed to the press about GM Bob Quinn, who had taken over for Piniella. Steinbrenner gave him the axe shortly thereafter.

On Christmas Day, 1989, Martin was drinking at a bar near his home. According to sources at the bar that day, he appeared too drunk to drive home and the bartender asked, “Who’s driving?” A friend of Martin held up the keys and said he would drive them home. On the drive home, the pickup truck they were in skidded down an embankment on a hairpin curve. Martin was not wearing a seatbelt and was killed when he flew through the windshield.

Three years before his death, Martin had his number retired and was honored with a plaque in Monument Park on August 10, 1986. The plaque read, “There has never been a greater competitor than Billy.” During the ceremony, Martin said, “I may not have been the greatest Yankee to put on the uniform, but I am the proudest.”

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Number Two

Derek Jeter, #2 (number retired on May 14, 2017)

Since 1921, the Yankees have only had two extended stretches during which they didn’t regularly make the postseason. The first was from 1965 to 1975, between the Mickey Mantle/Whitey Ford/Yogi Berra Yankees of the 1950s and early-1960s and the Reggie Jackson/Ron Guidry/Craig Nettles teams from 1975 to 1981. The other stretch was from 1982 to 1994. The Yankees had some good players those years, like Don Mattingly and Rickey Henderson, but never made the playoffs.

Derek Jeter arrived during the 1995 season, just as that second long playoff drought ended. He only played in 15 games in 1995, but became a regular and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award in 1996. He would play 20 seasons with the Yankees and make the AL All-Star team 14 times. The Yankees won the World Series five times while Jeter was their shortstop, including three in a row from 1998 to 2000. Even though he never won a regular season MVP award, Jeter did finish in the top 10 in MVP voting eight times. He also won five (questionable) Gold Glove Awards.

The MLB.com Facebook page has “The Jeet 16,” which shows a mixture of 16 memorable moments related to Derek Jeter battling it out in a head-to-head bracket to determine the ultimate Jeter moment. The Jeet 16 runs the gamut from his Opening Day Homer in 1996 to “The Flip” versus the Oakland A’s to his record for most hits by a shortstop. The consensus among the people surveyed on that page is that “The Flip” was the iconic Jeter moment.

It was a heck of a play (not exactly Jeremy Giambi’s shining moment, though. A slide might have been a good idea). This Sunday in New York will be all-Jeter, all-day. According to this article at ESPN.com, the average price for a ticket to Jeter’s retirement game is $284, making it the best-selling game of the year for StubHub.

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Number Three

Babe Ruth, #3 (number retired on June 13, 1948)

Babe Ruth had already played more than half of his career as a New York Yankee before a uniform number first appeared on the back of his jersey. Previously, a few teams had experimented with wearing numbers on their sleeves, but abandoned the idea after a short period of time.

It’s commonly thought that the Yankees were the first team to wear numbers on the backs of their jerseys, but this is not true. It is true that the defending World Series champion Yankees announced they would wear numbers during the 1929 season, but the Cleveland Indians also planned to do so. When the Yankees were rained out on Opening Day, Cleveland became the first team to wear numbers on their backs.

Of course, the Yankees were bigger than life in the 1920s, so the idea that they were the first team to wear numbers on the back of their jerseys took hold and has persisted for nearly 90 years. It’s a great story in part because of the iconic number three and four of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, respectively. Ruth and Gehrig used those numbers because they batted third and fourth in the lineup, which was the initial way the Yankees doled out jersey numbers.

Over the years, there have been other numbering systems. Cincinnati Reds general manager Warren Giles initiated a system in 1939 that designated single digit numbers for catchers, coaches and managers. Infielders wore numbers between 10 and 19. Outfielders took the numbers between 20 and 29. Pitchers received numbers between 30 and 49. Giles became chief executive of the National League in 1952 and this number system spread to many other NL teams. It took until the 1970s for teams to abandon this system.

These days, numbers higher than 50 are usually worn by pitchers. They don’t go too high, though. You don’t see many players with numbers above 60. In fact, if you watch a spring training game and see a player wearing a number above 60, you can be sure he’s not a top prospect. The higher the number, the less likely the player is to make the team. The infamous picture of “Minor League Guy on third” is a classic example of this:

There was never a better player to wear number three than Babe Ruth. He wasn’t the only power hitter to wear the number. He was just the best of them. Jimmie Foxx wore number three for the Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox. Harmon Killebrew wore it for three different teams. More recently, Dale Murphy and Harold Baines proudly wore the number.

Number 44 has been worn by some of the game’s greatest home run hitters, including Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Reggie Jackson, and current sluggers Anthony Rizzo and Paul Goldschmidt. Three famous knuckleball pitchers—Charlie Hough, Tim Wakefield, and Tom Candiotti—wore number 49. In the Japanese baseball leagues, number 18 is reserved for the team’s ace. Hiroki Kuroda, Diasuke Matsuzaka, and Hisashi Iwakuma wore or currently wear number 18.

Some players have worn either 0 or 00, often because it matched the initial of their first name or first and last names. Examples of players wearing 0 include Junior Ortiz, Al Oliver, Oddibe McDowell, and Rey Ordonez. Omar Olivarez was 00 because of his initials. Jack Clark and Jeffrey Leonard also wore 00 at times in their careers because who’s going to tell them not to?

At the end of his career, Prince Fielder wore number 84, possibly because he was as big as an NFL tight end. He is the only MLB player to wear number 84. In a hypothetical MLB/NFL hybrid game, Fielder could line up opposite number 99, Manny Ramirez.

Two of the most interesting players in the history of the game, Randy Johnson and Ichiro Suzuki, wore number 51. Johnson won over 300 games in his career and Ichiro had over 3000 hits. This was also the number of Trevor Hoffman, Willie McGee, and Bernie Williams. That’s a pretty good number.

Of course, number five has been worn by Johnny Bench, George Brett, Joe DiMaggio, and Albert Pujols. That’s an impressive number five-wearing foursome. It doesn’t quite match the greatness of number 24, though, which was worn by Willie Mays, Rickey Henderson, and Ken Griffey, Jr., all first-ballot Hall of Famers.

Which brings us back to Babe Ruth, and the number three. He got that iconic number because he batted third in the lineup in the first game in which numbers were used by the Yankees in 1929. For the entire season, though, he batted fourth more often than third (67 games to 66 games) and it was Lou Gehrig who batted third more than any other Yankee that year (77 times). They could easily have had their numbers flipped that first, fateful day.

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Number Four

Lou Gehrig, #4 (number retired on July 4, 1939)

Lou Gehrig’s career began before the Yankees started wearing numbers on their backs and ended abruptly because of ALS, so he is the only New York Yankee to ever wear number four. He was also the first Yankee to have his number retired. The ceremony came on July 4, 1939, and is remembered because of Gehrig’s famous speech.

It’s amazing to look back at the final few years of Gehrig’s career. It’s easy to see how the disease had ravaged him by his final year in 1939. He played just eight games and hit .143/.273/.143 before gracefully walking away from the sport because he knew he was no longer able to help the team. The year before, though, he played 157 games and hit .295/.410/.523. He had 29 home runs and 114 RBI. It’s very likely that the disease had already started to take its toll, but Gehrig was still a fine player, if not the superstar he’d been just a few years before.

Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech was impactful at the time and became even more so after Gary Cooper played him in The Pride of the Yankees. The lines Cooper read were close to what Gehrig actually said that day, but not exactly the same. Gehrig said more about the people who had been important to him in his life, the people who he felt “lucky” to have known, which was a running theme in his speech that explained the “luckiest man” line that became so famous. Here is the generally accepted original text:

Fans, for the past two weeks, you have been reading about bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.   Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky.   Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow. To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins.Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.   When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something.   When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that’s the finest I know.   So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank you.

It’s a remarkable speech for a man who had been one of the best baseball players in the world just a few years before and who had been given just a few years more to live. In fact, Gehrig died less than two years later.

After playing Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees, Cooper spent time during World War II entertaining troops in the South Pacific. He was supposed to be comic relief, doing Jack Benny scripts. At one stop, though, a soldier asked him to do Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech. Cooper did the speech as the troops silently listened. He would say later that requests for the speech came at many stops during his tour. “They were the words of a brave American who had only a short time to live and they meant something to those kids in the Pacific.”

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Number Five

Joe DiMaggio, #5 (number retired on April 18, 1952)

You might be able to win a bar bet with the question: “What was Joe DiMaggio’s number in his rookie year?” The answer is nine. Of course, DiMaggio is well known for the number five, which he switched to after his first season. While DiMaggio wore number nine during his rookie year, his teammate Frankie Crosetti wore number five and had an All-Star season. The next year, Crosetti gave number five to DiMaggio and switched to number one. He would later wear number two, which makes him one of only two Yankees to ever wear three single-digit numbers (along with Tony Lazzeri).

When DiMaggio missed three seasons in the middle of his career for military service, his number five was given to the immortal Nick Etten. Etten was 29 years old in 1943 and took full advantage of the lower caliber of pitching during the war years. He led the league in home runs and walks in 1944 and in RBI in 1945. He got AL MVP votes all three years. Etten was a bat-first player who finished with negative value on defense in his career. Pitcher Joe Trimble remembered Etten in the 1982 book Baseball’s Greatest Quotes with the line, “Nick Etten’s glove fields better with Nick Etten out of it.”

DiMaggio rejoined the Yankees in 1946 and got his number five back. He retired after the 1951 season and his number was retired the following April. At the retirement ceremony, DiMaggio donated one of his jerseys from the previous season to Rowan Spraker, the Vice President of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Years after the jersey was donated, researchers made an interesting discovery. DiMaggio had appeared in the 1951 movie “Angels in the Outfield” wearing one of his own jerseys. The jersey he donated to the Hall of Fame at his retirement ceremony was compared to the jersey he wore in the film and determined to be the same jersey. Along with DiMaggio, Ty Cobb and Bing Crosby appeared in the film.

DiMaggio is considered by many to be the greatest MLB player to ever wear number five, but he has some serious competition. Other great number fives include Johnny Bench, Albert Pujols, Hank Greenberg, George Brett, Brooks Robinson, and Jeff Bagwell. A hypothetical team made up of all number fives could do well against any other number, with Joe DiMaggio holding down the centerfield spot.

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Number Six

Joe Torre, #6 (number retired on August 23, 2014)

Some very good players have worn number six for the Yankees. Tony Lazzeri had the number from 1934 to 1937 before ceding it to Joe Gordon in 1938. Many years later, Roy White wore the number from 1969 to 1979. The last Yankees player to wear it was Tony Fernandez, in 1995. Joe Torre took over as manager of the Yankees in 1996 and wore number six for the rest of his Yankees career.

It’s hard to know how much of the success or failure of a team should be attributed to the manager. The main things we have to go on are the team’s win-loss record, playoff appearances, and World Series titles. Of course, the best manager in the world can’t make chicken salad out of chicken . . . well, you know. It takes great players to win games, so how much credit should go to the players and how much to the managers is hard to say.

Looking at the numbers, Joe Torre is one of the four best managers the Yankees have ever had, along with Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel, and Miller Huggins. He had more wins than all but one other Yankee manager, Joe McCarthy, and a higher winning percentage than all but two others, Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel. The average finish of a Joe Torre-led Yankees team was 1.2. They never once finished lower than second place with Torre at the helm and only finished that low twice in 12 seasons. His teams won the World Series four times, including three in a row from 1998 to 2000.

One of the best attributes of Torre as a manager was his relationship with his players. Former Yankee Paul O’Neill said of Torre, “Joe doesn’t put added pressure on you or act differently toward you because you’re not hitting or playing well. Players pick up on these things.” Torre also survived for 12 years as manager under owner George Steinbrenner, easily a record with the impulsive owner who once made nine managerial changes in six seasons (1978-1983). He had his number retired at a ceremony in Yankee Stadium in 2014.

After leaving the Yankees, Torre managed the Los Angeles Dodgers for three years. Twice they won their division but lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS. He was let go after a fourth place finish in 2010. The next year, he became the Executive Vice President for Baseball Operations. He also managed the USA team in the World Baseball Classic in 2013 and led a group of MLB officials and players on a trip to Cuba in 2015.

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Number Seven

Mickey Mantle, #7 (number retired on June 8, 1969)

When Mickey Mantle first came up to the big leagues in 1951, he wore number six. Outfielder Cliff Mapes wore number seven. Mantle hit .260/.341/.423 in his first 69 games with the Yankees and was sent back to the minors for more seasoning in mid-July. He crushed it with the Double-A Kansas City Blues, hitting .361/.445/.651, and got the call to return to the Yankees in late August. In the meantime, Cliff Mapes had been traded to the St. Louis Browns. After the Mapes trade, Bob Cerv was called up from the Kansas City Blues and given number seven. He was sent down when Mantle came up. When Mantle returned, he was given number seven, the number that he would be known for long after his career ended.

Imagine if Mantle had not been sent back to the minors. Would he have continued to wear number six or would he have asked for number seven after Cliff Mapes was traded? This series of events changed history. If Mickey Mantle kept his original number, we would never have had this epic moment in Seinfeldian history:

Mantle continued to wear number seven throughout his career with the Yankees, which ended with the 1968 season. The following June, his number was retired by the Yankees. At the time, he joined Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio as the first four Yankees players to have their numbers retired. That could be a Mt. Rushmore of Yankee greatness right there.

In April, a story went around that Yankees prospect Clint Frazier asked if the Yankees ever “un-retired” numbers because he wanted to wear number seven. There was plenty of social media mocking directed his way, but Yankees GM Brian Cashman came out and said the story was “totally untrue.” No one with the Yankees could confirm that Frazier ever made the request.

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Number Eight

Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra, #8 (number retired on July 22, 1972)

Traditionally, in Little League, the jerseys numbers get higher in conjunction with the size of the jersey. This means the low numbers go to the little guys, like the second basemen or the third baseman’s younger brother. The higher numbers, like 12 or 14, go to the big guys, often times the catcher. The best player wears number 11. The fastest player is either speedy little number one or tall, sleek number seven.

According to Will Leitch, the number eight is perfect for Yogi Berra. Leitch writes, “You need to have a thick, almost round back for this one to work. Yogi Berra was perfect: It’s an underrated catcher’s number.” Berra is one of three Hall of Fame catchers to wear number. Fellow Yankee Bill Dickey also wore number eight, as did Gary “The Kid” Carter.

Bill Dickey was a very good catcher for the Yankees from 1928 to 1943, and again in 1946 after serving in the military. He was an 11-time All-Star and finished in the top 10 in AL MVP voting five times. In his career, he was 26 percent better than league average as a hitter and provided positive value on defense. He’s one of the top 10 catchers of all-time. Dickey wore number eight for most of his career and retired after the 1946 season.

During Dickey’s final season, a funny-looking, big-eared guy showed up, ready to be the Yankees starting catcher. It was Yogi Berra, wearing number 38 during part of that first season, then switching to number 35. In 1948, Berra donned the number eight and wore that for the rest of his career.

As good as Dickey had been, Berra was even better. He played 19 years with the Yankees and was an All-Star for 16 of them, all in a row. From 1950 to 1956, Berra finished in the top four in AL MVP voting every single season, and won the award in three of them, including back-to-back MVPs in 1954 and 1955.

Berra also had the great fortune of playing for the Yankees during the most dominant stretch for any team in baseball history. They went to the World Series 14 times in his 19 seasons and won 10 of them. Of course, it wasn’t just good fortune because Berra himself deserves credit for helping those teams achieve the success they had.

On July 22, 1972, the Yankees retired the number eight. Because of the excellence of both Dickey and Berra, it was retired for both of them. At the time, they joined Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle as the only Yankees players to have their number retired.

Sixteen years later, the Yankees added plaques for both Dickey and Berra in Monument Park. Now, many years after both Dickey and Berra last played baseball, it’s Yogi Berra who is considered the better player overall. This wasn’t always the case, though. In 1969, after both players had retired, the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball conducted a national poll to determine the greatest living players at each position. Bill Dickey won the vote, with Berra on the second team.

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Number Nine

Roger Maris, #9 (number retired on July 21, 1984)

If you asked the average fan which Yankees players had their single-digit uniform numbers retired by the team, it would likely be Roger Maris who would be the most difficult one for fans to remember. Maris wasn’t in the stratosphere of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Bill Dickey, or Yogi Berra, and wasn’t as notorious as Billy Martin or as recent as Derek Jeter and Joe Torre.

Maris was good, though. He was traded to the Yankees by the Kansas City Athletics in December of 1959. At the time, it often felt like the A’s were a Yankees farm team, even though both were competitors in the American League. The Yankees acquired a number of good players from the A’s, with Maris being one of the best. In his first season with the Yankees, he led the league in RBI and slugging percentage and won the AL MVP Award.

The next year, 1961, put Maris in the media spotlight because of his epic home run chase with Mickey Mantle. Both players had a shot to eclipse the single-season home run record of 60 home runs, held by the great Babe Ruth. At the All-Star break, Maris had 33 homers to Mantle’s 29. By the end of July, his lead was down to one, 40 to 39. Heading into September, Maris had 51 home runs and Mantle had 48. Maris hit 10 more home runs through the end of the season, finishing with 61. Mantle was injured for the last half of September and finished with 54.

Breaking Babe Ruth’s record came with some controversy. Maris hit his 61 dingers when the Yankees had a 162-game schedule, while Ruth’s Yankees had played just 154 games. The commissioner at the time, Ford Frick, had been a friend of Babe Ruth and worried during the season that Mantle or Maris would break the Babe’s record. In July, Frick held a press conference and said:

“Any player who has hit more than 60 home runs during his club’s first 154 games would be recognized as having established a new record. However, if the player does not hit more than 60 until after his club has played 154 games, there would have to be some distinctive mark on the record books to show that Babe Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule.”

According to Maury Allen, sportswriter Dick Young shouted out, “Maybe you should use an asterisk on the new record. Everybody does that when there’s a difference of opinion.” This is how the myth that Maris’ record had an asterisk attached to it came to be.

The reality was that baseball did not have an “official” record book at the time, so there was no specific place for the two records to be listed separately, or with an asterisk for Maris. Frisk was simply trying to put the idea out there that any mention of the home run record should show both records, one for a 154-game season and one for a 162-game season.

Frisk himself wrote in his 1973 autobiography that no asterisk ever appeared in the official records. Of course, by that time, everyone thought there was an asterisk. Almost 20 years later, in 1991, Commissioner Fay Vincent appointed a Committee on Statistical Accuracy and the committee voted to remove an asterisk that never existed in the first place. The 2001 Billy Crystal movie about the Maris/Mantle home run race was titled “61*”, which furthered the myth of the asterisk.

With all of the talk about home runs in a certain number of games played, it’s rarely mentioned that Maris hit his 60^th home run in his 684^th plate appearance. It took Ruth 689 plate appearances to hit 60. Not that it really matters now.

Next: Mock draft version 2.1

Unlike many of the single-digit Yankees who have had their numbers retired, the number nine worn by Maris continued to be worn by other players after Maris retired. Steve Whitaker and Dick Simpson each wore it for one season. Ron Woods wore it from 1969 to 1971. In 1973, third baseman Graig Nettles joined the Yankees and took number nine, which he wore until his time with the Yankees ended with the 1983 season. The number was retired for Roger Maris in July of 1984.