A NUMBERS GAME
Next digits to be retired by local teams should be ...
U
NIFORM numbers aren’t for everyone. I have friends who I’d consider to be engaged sports fans who have almost zero recall of who wore what number — and even less inclination to further study the art.
I also have friends — and I’m the chairman of this little extra-curricular activity — who believe uniform numbers are an essential part of investing in sports. I’m not saying that’s true. I just know that the other night a buddy asked about Ron Gardenhire — an excellent manager in his day but a fairly obscure Met before that — and I immediately said “19.” I’m not sure I can recall anything else about Gardenhire’s 285-game tenure with the Mets, but I remembered he wore 19. When the friend looked it up on Baseball-Reference.com and confirmed it, he nodded in admiration.
This isn’t a skill that will change the world. But I’m a uniform number guy. So Saturday was my kind of day, the Mets retiring Darryl Strawberry’s No. 18 forever, swelling the roster at Citi Field to seven — 14 (Gil Hodges), 16 (Doc Gooden), 17 (Keith Hernandez), 18 (Strawberry), 36 (Jerry Koosman), 37 (Casey Stengel) and 41 (Tom Seaver) when, for the longest time, only Hodges, Stengel and Seaver had that honor.
It got me thinking about who might get the next retired number for each of our nine teams in the four major leagues. And here is one man’s guess at that:
METS
It almost certainly has to be David Wright’s 5, it’s just a matter of when. After that? Just about every worthy member of the all-time roster (for now) will have been duly honored. It’s anyone’s guess who the ninth number would be. He might not have been drafted yet — though if he stays around, Pete Alonso is a possibility.
YANKEES
No team better takes care of its legends in this regard than the Yankees, so there are no holdouts. Safe to say Aaron Judge’s 99 will reside in Monument Park someday, at the earliest possible date.
GIANTS
I’d say at some point a public reconnection/reconciliation with Tiki Barber is in order. He is the all-time rusher — by more than 3,500 yards — for a team that’s about to begin its 100th year of operation. It should be time for 21.
JETS
This one should have been done a long time ago: Gerry Philbin’s 81. He was the Joe Namath (only less chatty) of the ’68 Jets defense.
KNICKS
While I’d love to suggest that someday Julius Randle will have enough gravitas to warrant a dual hanging of 30 with Bernard King, the most egregious omission right now is Richie Guerin’s No. 9, which should’ve been hung at the Garden decades ago.
NETS
We know the answer to this: The Nets will retire Vince Carter’s 15 next season. Me? I’d have gone with Micheal Ray Richardson’s 20 before Carter. His time with the Nets was brief and ended badly but he was electric.
RANGERS
I’m with my man Brooksie on this one: Brad Park’s No. 2 should be added to Brian Leetch’s No. 2 sooner rather than later. And there’s precedent: two 9s (Adam Graves and Andy Bathgate) and two 11s (Mark Messier and Vic Hadfield) already hang in the rafters.
ISLANDERS
The only real omission from the Dynasty Boys is Ken Morrow, as reliable and as clutch a player as any of them. His No. 6 really belongs at UBS Center.
DEVILS
Claude Lemieux was an essential part of the team’s attack and an integral part of the dressing room for the 1995 and 2000 champs. Neither departure was especially smooth, but Pepe’s 22 should hang.