Bill Dickey, The "Man Nobody Knows" |
The New York Yankees organization and brand is one of the
most recognizable in not only Major League Baseball but maybe around the world.
For the longest time everyone wanted to be a Yankee and were honored to don the
Yankees pinstripes no matter what number was on their back. Recently it seems
like players either don’t want to play for the Yankees for whatever reason,
their archaic facial hair policy for one and lack of spending recently for
another, which may be a good thing or a bad thing for the organization. It’s a
bad thing because the recognizable names and star players is what drives the
financial monster that is the New York Yankees but it’s a good thing because
the team is running out of numbers to retire.
We post some sort of post like this every single season only
because every single season it seems to be getting worse and worse for New
York. Logically speaking the Yankees have room for 101 uniform numbers during
the season including 0, 00 and 1 through 99 but the true options for Yankees
players is dwindling down. We’ve seen the Yankees spring training invited share
numbers for two seasons in a row and after New York brings its entire 40 man
roster, non-roster invitees and a mix of non-Rule 5 Draft eligible players to
Tampa next month it looks like the players will have to share for a third
straight season. New York has yet to announce their full list of non-roster
invitees but it will likely be somewhere around the 27 they brought to camp
last season bringing the tally to 67 players in uniform with the 40 man roster.
When you consider the Yankees need numbers for eight
uniformed coaches and a bullpen catcher you find the number climbing to 76 guys
before you even consider the massive number of retired numbers the Yankees no
longer have in circulation. The Yankees have retired 20 different uniform
numbers in their history including two different players, Yogi Berra and Bill Dickey,
who wore #8 and Mariano Rivera and Jackie Robinson’s shared #42 inside Monument
Park. That’s also before you consider that the Yankees won’t hand out Derek
Jeter’s #2, Paul O’Neill’s #21 or the list of other numbers the team refuses to
hand out.
Will the Yankees be the first team to head into triple
digits after becoming the first team to even retire a number team wide? It sure
is looking like it, isn’t it? Until next year when we have even more numbers
retired (presumably) and even less to talk about in terms of spring training
jerseys.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)