This is nothing against Bernie Williams, the former Yankee center fielder whose number 51 was retired at Yankee Stadium Sunday night, before the game against the Rangers. The man played with class, carried himself with class, and set a major league record for postseason RBIs, among other things. Any time there was a touch of insanity around any Yankee season during his career, Williams seemed often enough the most dignified and accessible Yankee.
In 2011, when he entered the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time (even though he wouldn't make his retirement official until this year), I wrote thus:
"By the Bill James measurements of the Hall of Fame Standards and the Hall of Fame Monitor, Williams actually shakes out as a very average Hall of Famer: He meets 49 percent of the Standards (the average Hall of Famer meets 50 percent), and he scores 149 on the Monitor. (The average Hall of Famer: 100.) What hurts him is a dubious defense jacket (he won a few Gold Gloves when he wasn't even close to the best defensive center fielder in the league; he was an excellent fielder his first few seasons but devolved as his career went on), the fact that he often hit better early in the game than in late pressure, and the fact that he only ever led his league in one category (he won the batting title in 1998) while falling far below an average Hall of Famer on the Gray Ink Test. (Williams: 61; average Hall of Famer: 144.)
"What helps him? It almost didn't matter where Williams played, he was dead even at home and on the road when all was said and done: he has an .858 OPS in both scenarios, and he hit exactly one more home run on the road than at home. His postseason shakeout is pretty much a match for his regular seasons: an .850 OPS lifetime in the postseason. As a matter of fact, Bernie Williams's lifetime postseason line would equal a solid if not too spectacular regular season for quite a few players: .275 BA, .371 OBP, .480 SLG, 22 home runs, 80 runs batted in."
Williams appeared on two Hall of Fame ballots and dropped off after pulling down less than 5.0 percent of the writers' vote in 2012-13.
If you assume that retiring a player's uniform number signifies unquestioned greatness, retiring Williams' number 51 raises more questions, the key among them what Sports Illustrated's Richard Rothschild: Haven't the Yankees retired way too many numbers?
"Already jokes have started about when the Bronx Bombers will hand out triple digit numbers or numerals with decimal points," Rothschild writes puckishly. "Monument Park may need to relocate to Utah's Monument Valley."
But all kidding aside, it just may get to that point in the Bronx. Here are the Yankees' retired uniform numbers as of Sunday night, in ascending numeric order: Billy Martin (1), Babe Ruth (3), Lou Gehrig (4), Joe DiMaggio (5), Joe Torre (6), Mickey Mantle (7), Bill Dickey (8), Yogi Berra (8), Roger Maris (9), Phil Rizzuto (10), Thurman Munson (15), Whitey Ford (16), Don Mattingly (23), Elston Howard (32), Casey Stengel (37), Mariano Rivera (42), Reggie Jackson (44), Ron Guidry (49), and Williams (51).
That's 18 uniform numbers retired once Williams's ceremony was done. The pending number retirements of Derek Jeter (2), Jorge Posada (20), and Andy Pettitte (46) will bring the Yankee total to 21. And if you account for Rivera and Jeter being Hall of Famers in waiting, the good news is that, of all the retired Yankee uniform numbers, only six don't belong to Hall of Famers.
Roger Maris and Don Mattingly might have become Hall of Famers if injuries hadn't broken them down before they could solidify their cases. Elston Howard was the first African-American to wear the pinstripes and was a useful catcher (and a 1963 American League Most Valuable Player Award winner) without quite becoming a great one, though he looked like he'd become a great one at first, once he got the regular job. His problems: a) Yankee Stadium was a park that killed right-handed hitters; and, b) after three or four genuinely great seasons including his MVP, injuries ground Howard down, too. He eventually became a respected coach. He eventually became a respected coach.
Ron Guidry looked like a Hall of Famer early and often but his comparatively late arrival probably kept him from posting a few more seasons that might have gotten him in aboard his peak value. But George Steinbrenner came to respect him, and he was the pitching mainstay for the infamous Bronx Zoo teams of the late 1970s. If that's all you need to get your uniform number retired, you could probably point to a lot of similar survivors with similar records who didn't.
As strange as it seems, too, Jeter's pending number retirement will mean that no Yankee ever again will wear a single digit uniform number — unless he chooses (it's been done now and then) to wear number zero. No other major league team will have that dubious distinction. What makes it dubious is that one of the single digits should not have been retired.
Billy Martin (1) was not a great player, his 1953 World Series MVP notwithstanding. He had his uses as a utilityman, but he was never considered capable of a regular everyday job, and he brawled his way off the Yankees and out of a couple of other places, for the most part, before his playing career ended. Being one of Mickey Mantle's drinking pals gets you only so far if you can't and don't produce.
Moreover, and it's probably the animating reason why his number was retired, Martin was not a truly great manager. For the game you needed to win immediately, if not five minutes ago, Martin was about the best in the business in his time and place, or at least before the boozing got too far beyond control. He could be and often was a clever tactician, even if his apparent taste for waging war with umpires and the occasional superstar on his own team got in the way.
But Martin was a divisive long-term manager who mishandled and even ruined a few pitching staffs. He often sought to divide and conquer among his players, and he was so incapable of getting out of his own way that there were actually times when George Steinbrenner's capricious managerial firings were justified in Martin's case, especially in the 1980s.
One suspects the real reason for Martin's number retirement might have been Steinbrenner's subdued guilt over exploiting Martin's almost pathological need to manage the Yankees.
Thurman Munson's number retirement probably had as much to do with honoring him after his tragic death in 1979 as anything else. If he'd lived? That's a big maybe, since, sad as it is to remember (and many don't), Munson — despite being considered a team leader — was already on the downslope of his career when his plane crashed. He looked like a great catcher earlier in his career, but his peak just wasn't going to be enough to make him a Hall of Famer.
Perhaps no Yankee number retirement is more ridiculous than the double retirement of number 8. To anyone who knows the game and the players in question, it should have been no contest. Great as Bill Dickey was in his time, Yogi Berra was ten times the catcher and the player Dickey — who mentored Berra as a young Yankee ("Bill is learning me all his experience," Yogi said famously) — actually was.
Exactly why the Yankees double-retired number 8 remains debatable, but it should have been no contest. Berra is the no-questions-asked greatest receiver ever to play the game with Johnny Bench his oh-so-close second. Dickey was one of the two best of his own time (Mickey Cochrane was the other) but this was one case in which the pupil, no questions asked, out-shone the teacher and everyone else in the job.
Dickey earned his place in the Hall of Fame, of course, but it would not have dishonored him one whit to retire number 8 for Yogi Berra alone.
On the other hand, if you think a couple of the Yankees' excessively retired uniform numbers really didn't have any business being retired just yet, think about this: You could probably win a few World Series with a starting lineup drawn from those numbers:
C — Yogi Berra
1B — Lou Gehrig
2B — Phil Rizzuto (If Alex Rodriguez could move to third base for Derek Jeter, why can't Rizzuto move to second?)
3B — Joe Torre (Torre played a serviceable third base in his later playing career, and you're not going to catch him ahead of Yogi unless you're bucking for mandatory daily drug testing.)
SS — Jeter
LF — Joe DiMaggio (The hell with the Yankee Clipper's ego, you and I both know who the best center fielder in the history of the Yankees is.)
CF — Mickey Mantle
RF — Babe Ruth
SP — Whitey Ford
CL — The Mariano
Are there are a few uniform number retirements — or non-retirements — around baseball that make the Yankees' number retirement volume seem somewhat sane in comparison? (And how on earth did Goose Gossage manage to miss the Yankee cut?) Let's review:
ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS — Have retired: Luis Gonzalez. (20.) Should retire: Curt Schilling (38), Randy Johnson (51).
Gonzalez had his best seasons with the Diamondbacks; Johnson, of course, is about to be inducted as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and Schilling should have been. The Snakes probably retired Gonzalez's number as much in tribute to what he meant to their (so far) only World Series championship. And it is fair to say that if he'd has some seasons otherwise equal to his best Arizona seasons, he might have been a Hall of Famer himself.
ATLANTA BRAVES — Have retired: Dale Murphy (3), Bobby Cox (6), Chipper Jones (10), Warren Spahn (21), John Smoltz (29), Greg Maddux (31), Phil Niekro (35), Eddie Mathews (41), Hank Aaron (44), Tom Glavine (47). Should retire: Fred Haney (2).
At this writing the Braves have ten retired numbers and all but one (Murphy) belong to Hall of Famers. (Count on it: Chipper Jones is a Hall of Famer in waiting.) Murphy might have been a Hall of Famer if injuries hadn't ground him down a little too soon and he'd had a chance to show what he could do in a home park that wasn't a hitter's paradise.
Haney was the first to manage the Braves to back-to-back pennants and won a World Series in the first of those seasons. (Cox did it twice, and won his only World Series as he started the second such string.) He also won the only World Series yet to be won by any Milwaukee team. Even if he finished what Charlie Grimm started in re-aligning the 1950s Braves to that level, Haney does deserve the honor.
BALTIMORE ORIOLES — Have retired: Earl Weaver (4), Brooks Robinson (5), Cal Ripken, Jr. (8), Frank Robinson (20), Jim Palmer (22), Eddie Murray (33). Should retire: George Sisler, Mike Mussina (35).
The Orioles have Hall of Famers one and all with retired uniform numbers so far. Mussina pitched the meat of a should-be Hall of Fame career in Baltimore,On the other hand, the Orioles might be forgiven for forgetting their origins as the St. Louis Browns, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't forget arguably the Browns' all-time best player. Sisler played before uniform numbers became common, but just as the Giants (see below) have done with a couple of pre-number players, they could retire Sisler's uniform symbolically, perhaps with a brown "STL" or "GS." and the Yankees have too damn many retired numbers already.
BOSTON RED SOX — Have retired: Bobby Doerr (1), Joe Cronin (4), Johnny Pesky (6), Carl Yastrzemski (8), Ted Williams (9), Jim Rice (14), Carlton Fisk (27). Should retire: Roger Clemens (22), Curt Schilling (38), Pedro Martinez (45), Terry Francona (47). Ask me when his career is over: David Ortiz (34).
Pesky is the only non-Hall of Famer whose uniform number has been retired by the Red Sox, but you'd be hard pressed to argue against it considering how well he played for the great Red Sox teams of the mid-to-late 1940s and how beloved he became as a franchise icon.
Clemens was the greatest pitcher in Red Sox history before a) the suspicions around you-kn0w-what issue that dogged him after he left Boston, and b) the advent of Pedro Martinez, who's about to become a first ballot Hall of Famer. Schilling was a key player in the Red Sox's return to the Promised Land in 2004 and 2007 and — whatever you think of his doings or sayings off the field or since his retirement — he was, I repeat, the very essence of big game pitching and big game guts on the mound.
Francona may have left Boston bitterly enough (essentially, he quit before he could be executed for the 2012 collapse) but he is the no-questions-asked greatest manager the franchise has ever known, managing the team to those two World Series rings breaking the actual or alleged Curse of the Bambino while he was at it.
CHICAGO CUBS — Have retired: Ron Santo (10), Ernie Banks (14), Ryne Sandberg (23), Billy Williams (26), Ferguson Jenkins (31), Greg Maddux (31). Should retire: Leo Durocher (2), Gabby Hartnett (9).
Like the Yankees with Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra, the Cubs inexplicably retired 31 for both Jenkins and Maddux. I say inexplicably because Maddux posted the absolute meat for his Hall of Fame credentials in Atlanta, even if he eventually returned to the Cubs for a spell as a prodigal elder. Retiring 31 for Jenkins alone makes better sense, since the meat for his Hall credentials was cured in Chicago.
Durocher may or may not be the greatest manager who ever commanded a team (there are arguments in both directions, his Hall of Fame status notwithstanding), but he did manage the Cubs back to respectability in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and he got close enough to winning the National League East in 1969.
(The problem was, he also blew that division title by overworking his regulars and his bullpen and leaving nothing in the tank for the stretch drive during which they were overtaken by the clicking-on-all-cylinders Mets.)
Hartnett is remembered mostly for the "Homer in the Gloamin'," the walk-off bomb he hit in September 1938, at age 37, after the umpires declared the ninth would be the last inning played due to pending darkness no matter if the score was tied. The homer put the Cubs in first place; they clinched the pennant three days later. But Hartnett is also a Hall of Famer who was considered one of the greatest defensive catchers in the National League in his time and place. (Bill James estimates that, if Gold Gloves were awarded during Hartnett's years, he might have been good for eight of them.)
CHICAGO WHITE SOX — Have retired: Nellie Fox (2), Harold Baines (3), Luke Appling (4), Minnie Minoso (9), Luis Aparicio (11), Ted Lyons (16), Billy Pierce (19), Frank Thomas (35), Carlton Fisk (72). Should have retired: Al Lopez (42). Ask me when his career is over: Jose Abreu (79).
Except for Baines (who shouldn't be), Minoso (who should be), and Pierce (who shouldn't be, though he was a terrific pitcher), the White Sox's retired numbers roll is a roll of Hall of Famers.
Lopez, one of the game's finer defensive catchers in his playing days, managed the White Sox back to the World Series in 1959 and restored the team's competitiveness after long decades in the dark following the Black Sox scandal. He'd taken the Indians to the 1954 World Series after a record-setting season (they were flattened by the Giants in four straight, alas), but I think he probably meant more to the White Sox in the long run.
His number was retired in the breach when baseball retired Jackie Robinson's number all around the Show, but Lopez did deserve the honor for the White Sox in his own right.
CINCINNATI REDS — Have retired: Fred Hutchinson (1), Will Hershberger (5), Johnny Bench (5), Joe Morgan (8), Sparky Anderson (10), Barry Larkin (11), Dave Concepcion (13), Ted Kluszewski (18), Frank Robinson (20), Tony Perez (24). Should retire: Ernie Lombardi (4), Pete Rose (14). Ask me when their careers are over: Joey Votto (19), Johnny Cueto (47), Aroldis Chapman (54).
Like the Cubs with Jenkins and Maddux's 31, there's absolutely no reason for number 5 to have been retired for anyone other than Bench. It makes sad sense that the Reds should have wanted to remember the tragic Hershberger, whose 1940 suicide stunned the team and the game. But he was merely the backup to Hall of Famer Ernie Lombardi in his only two major league seasons. He showed some promise, but he died before anyone would have known whether he'd become a genuinely great player.
Lombardi changed uniform numbers several times during his Cincinnati years, but since a) he is a Hall of Famer and b) wore number 4 while helping the Reds win back to back pennants and a World Series, that should be the number retired. Rose you know about, and his banishment for gambling makes things tricky when it comes to Reds honoraria, but I can't imagine the commissioner's office or anyone else objecting to his uniform retirement.
CLEVELAND INDIANS — Have retired: Earl Averill (3), Lou Boudreau (5), Larry Doby (14), Mel Harder (18), Bob Feller (19), Bob Lemon (21). Should retire: Kenny Lofton (7), Early Wynn (24).
Harder is the only non-Hall of Famer on the Indians' retired numbers list. Hall of Famer Wynn was a key man in the Indians' rotation in their second-most competitive decade and helped them to a World Series appearance in 1954. (So did Mike Garcia, twice the American League's ERA leader, but the Big Bear wasn't that close to a Hall of Famer and was basically the fourth man in a potent rotation though he was an excellent pitcher.) As a matter of trivia, Wynn eventually returned to Cleveland (after a spell with the White Sox, including winning a Cy Young Award with their 1959 pennant winner) to win his 300th game before retiring.
Lofton was the spark-plug when the Indians returned to competitiveness in the 1990s. In the end, he probably had a borderline Hall of Fame case when he dropped off the ballot after one try, surprisingly enough.
COLORADO ROCKIES — Have retired: Todd Helton (17). Should retire: Larry Walker (33). Ask me when his career is over: Troy Tulowitzki (2).
Helton was pretty much the face of the franchise until Troy Tulowitzki happened along. Walker played the bulk of a borderline Hall of Fame career with the Rockies. The franchise is too young to have gone nutshit with uniform retirements, of course, but Walker earned the honor.
DETROIT TIGERS — Have retired: Charlie Gehringer (2), Hank Greenberg (5), Al Kaline (6), Sparky Anderson (11), Hal Newhouser (16), Willie Horton (23). Should retire: Jim Bunning (14), Jack Morris (47). Symbolic retirement: Ty Cobb (TC). Ask me when his career is over: Justin Verlander (35).
Horton is the only non-Hall of Famer to have his number retired by the Tigers, but he was a key man in some of the franchise's more shining moments including the 1968 World Series triumph. Bunning is a Hall of Famer, but it's possible the franchise was embarrassed by his trade to Philadelphia before the 1964 season, giving up on the veteran after a 1963 the club thought indicated his aging.
Morris may have shaken out as short of a Hall of Famer (and the debate will go on as his time before Veterans Committee subdivisions approaches, of course), but he was the franchise's best pitcher in the 1980s and he did help them to a World Series title.
HOUSTON ASTROS — Have retired: Jeff Bagwell (5), Craig Biggio (7), Jimmy Wynn (24), Jose Cruz (25), Jim Umbricht (32), Mike Scott (33), Nolan Ryan (34), Don Wilson (40), Larry Dierker (49). Should retire: J.R. Richard (50). Ask me when his career is over: Jose Altuve (27).
Some of these numbers make no sense. Cruz was phenomenally popular in Houston but not even close to a Hall of Famer. Umbricht was a serviceable relief pitcher (he won all four decisions he had in the franchise's first season) but nothing spectacular. Scott had a brief spell of greatness during which he helped the Astros to the National League Championship Series — and got enough in the heads of the Mets that they ground out Game Six determined not to have to face him again (though Scott probably had more on the ball than just his fingers), but he wasn't even close to a Hall of Famer.
Neither were Wilson or Dierker, though Dierker was the staff ace and Wilson the number two man for a good spell. You can justify Wilson's number retirement a little more in light of his tragic death in 1975, though. You should justify Richard's number retirement even more.
At or near the top of the National League pitching heap, he suffered a 1980 stroke that shocked the entire organisation and the game itself, after he'd complained of a dead shoulder but the Astros accused him of malingering. Richard's stroke ended his career and embarrassed the organisation. It would only be right if they retire his number to honour their best pitcher of the 1970s and maybe the best pitcher in franchise history.
KANSAS CITY ROYALS — Have retired: George Brett (5), Dick Howser (10), Frank White (20). Should retire: Whitey Herzog (24), Dan Quisenberry (29).
Brett is a Hall of Famer, of course; White actually has a borderline Hall case. Howser managed the team to its only World Series title after jumping off the Yankee managerial merry-go-round of the 1980s, and his number retirement probably had as much to do with his courageous fight against brain cancer as with that Series conquest.
Herzog first managed the Royals to competitiveness; the Yankee-Royal rivalry of the 1970s was one of baseball's best and their tangles in the American League Championship Series were as memorable as any World Series.
There's the possibility that, institutionally, the franchise remains a little embarrassed by his departure: the White Rat was all but run out of Kansas City after the Royals failed to make the cut for the 1979 ALCS. He suspected that owner Ewing Kauffmann actually disliked him, possibly because he ran John Mayberry out of town (after Mayberry turned up hung over for the decisive ALCS game a year earlier); possibly, too, because Herzog had a lucrative attendance bonus in his contract.
Quisenberry was the Royals' first bona-fide superstar reliever; he led the American League in saves in four straight seasons and in five out of six, and they weren't just single-inning jobs, either. (He finished second in back-to-back Cy Young Award votings, too.) Articulate and witty, he was one of the Royals' most popular players and enjoyed a calm retirement until he, too, was stricken with brain cancer and died in 1998, seven years after his final game.
LOS ANGELES ANGELS — Have retired: Jim Fregosi (11), Gene Autry (26), Rod Carew (29), Nolan Ryan (30), Jimmie Reese (50). Should retire: Tim Salmon (15), Vladimir Guerrero (27), Dean Chance (31). Ask me when his career is over: Mike Trout (27).
Autry, of course, was the franchise's original owner, who didn't quite live long enough to see his Angels finally win one for the Cowboy; the "26" signified his standing among his players as the team's 26th man. Reese was a longtime and beloved coach.
Salmon was probably the best player in Angel history not named Vladimir Guerrero and not named — even once — to an all-star team. How good was he? He's second behind Fregosi on the Angels' all-time WAR list. What kept Salmon from Hall of Fame credentials may seem mysterious now (it was probably injuries), but he was a terrific player. If his number is retired in due course, it would make Salmon the only Angel lifer so honored.
Guerrero is a likely Hall of Famer (his Montreal seasons probably serve strongest to make his case) who was probably the single most popular Angel during his five seasons (including an MVP) in Anaheim. Chance was the franchise's first consistent pitching ace and first Cy Young Award winner — he rudely disrupted Sandy Koufax's Cy Young streak by snatching the 1964 award, though it did serve to keep the prize in Los Angeles, where it had been since 1962 (Don Drysdale) and would stay through 1966 (Koufax's second and third).
(Chance might have been the Angels' first star pitcher, too, if running mate Bo Belinsky — a far more self-destructive personality — hadn't charmed his way into Hollywood's heart first with his wit during a rookie spring holdout, his randy lifestyle, and his rookie no-hitter in 1962.)
LOS ANGELES DODGERS — Have retired: Pee Wee Reese (1), Tommy Lasorda (2), Duke Snider (4), Junior Gilliam (19), Don Sutton (20), Walter Alston (24), Sandy Koufax (32), Roy Campanella (39), Jackie Robinson (42), Don Drysdale (53). Should retire: Gil Hodges (14), Don Newcombe (36), Andy Messersmith (47). Ask me when his career is over: Clayton Kershaw (22).
Nine Hall of Famers out of 10 retired numbers is pretty good. But Hodges was the best first baseman the franchise ever produced, by a hair, and Newcombe was arguably their best pitcher of the early to mid 1950s, not to mention baseball's first-ever Cy Young Award winner.
And if you need an explanation as to why Messersmith deserves a retired Dodger number, you don't remember that he succeeded at last — after pitching without a contract for 1975 for openers — where Curt Flood failed so courageously.
Gilliam wasn't a Hall of Famer on the best day of his life, but the Dodgers probably honoured him because he became the Dodgers' second black starting infielder in 1953, and because he eventually came out of retirement to help the Dodgers win a World Series in 1965. (His diving stop of a Zoilo Versailles smash in Game Seven helped save Sandy Koufax's clinching shutout.) And, because he became a longtime respected coach after retiring as a player.
MIAMI MARLINS — Have retired: None. Should retire: Ask me when Giancarlo Stanton's career is over.
MILWAUKEE BREWERS — Have retired: Paul Molitor (4), Robin Yount (19), Rollie Fingers (34), Hank Aaron (44). Should retire: Harvey Kuenn (32).
Nobody objected to the Brewers retiring Aaron's number even if he did wind up his career with them as a kind of sentimental gesture on both sides, considering his path to greatness when the Braves played in Milwaukee.
Kuenn was a former American League batting titleist who was traded to Cleveland infamously for Rocky Colavito in 1960. ("I've just traded hamburger for steak!" crowed Indians GM Frank Lane, in one of the most controversial trades in baseball history — and lopsided; Lane saw nothing but Kuenn's gaudy batting averages and was too short-sighted to see Colavito was the superior run producer. Colavito's annual contract haggles with the penurious Lane probably factored in the decision to deal him.) He became the Brewers' manager in due course, managing them to their first World Series, in 1982, and took it to a seventh game.
(In honor of his lineup full of free-swinging power hitters — Gorman Thomas, Cecil Cooper, Ben Oglivie, et. al. — the club was nicknamed Harvey's Wallbangers.)
MINNESOTA TWINS — Have retired: Harmon Killebrew (3), Tony Oliva (6), Tom Kelly (10), Kent Hrbek (14), Bert Blyleven (28), Rod Carew (29), Kirby Puckett (34). Should retire: Joe Judge (5), Sam Rice (22), Walter Johnson (25), Johan Santana (57). Ask me when his career is over: Joe Mauer (7).
I'm not entirely convinced Hrbek's number should have been retired, popular as he was in Minnesota, since he was a player who brushed greatness now and then but only that.
The Twins seem to have little institutional affection for their Washington origins, and in some ways that might be understandable. (Washington — First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League, went the old legend.) But there's no reason not to retire numbers associated with three of the franchise's greatest players.
Judge was the longtime first baseman, thought to be the best defender at the position for much of his career, and factored in the Senators' only World Series championship before playing in a second straight Series. Johnson, the greatest pitcher the franchise has ever known, didn't wear a number until he managed the team for a few seasons, but since Blyleven has 28 sewn up Johnson's 25 would work. Rice is a Hall of Famer and there's an arguable case for Judge as well.
As for Santana, he was only the best pitcher in the American League while wearing a Twins uniform. His shoulder will prove to have kept him from solidifying a Hall of Fame case, but Santana was a genuinely great pitcher.
NEW YORK METS — Have retired: Gil Hodges (14), Casey Stengel (37), Tom Seaver (41). Should retire: Davey Johnson (5), Ed Kranepool (7), Gary Carter (8), Dwight Gooden (16), Keith Hernandez (17), Mike Piazza (31). Ask me when their careers are over: David Wright (5), Matt Harvey (33), Jacob deGrom (48).
The good news: two of the three retired Mets numbers belong to Hall of Famers, even if Stengel did the work that put him into the Hall of Fame in the first place for the 1949-60 Yankees. And Hodges, of course, managed the team to their first and in many ways most stupefying World Series conquest in 1969. (He should be a Hall of Famer, combining his playing career and his managing career, but that's another debate.)
David Wright wears No. 5 now and he's on the Hall of Fame path, of course, but the Mets should have retired it for Johnson. No matter the acrimony which surrounded his firing in 1991; no matter that the Mets he managed to greatness were such an insane in the brain bunch, largely, as to embarrass as often as ennoble the franchise.
Carter and Hernandez were the imports who helped shepherd the 1980s Mets to greatness until their bodies finally began aging the hard way. Gooden, of course, was the Mets' best pitcher of the 1980s, and it wasn't entirely his fault that he never sustained Hall of Fame level greatness. (The Mets' insistence in spring 1986 that he tone down the strikeouts and add off speed pitches he couldn't throw well probably had as much to do with it as any of Gooden's substance abuse issues.)
Kranepool was the longest-serving Met who came to the club in 1962 as a raw rookie; he eventually became a better than useful longtime utilityman at first base and the outfield, a sentimental favorite, and a valuable pinch hitter, and his retirement meant the retirement of the last and longest-lasting Original Met in a major league uniform.
Piazza is a should-be Hall of Famer who hit just about as well as a Met as he had for all those solid Dodger seasons. His signature moment was one no New Yorker will forget: what proved to be the game-winning bomb off a center field television camera, in the first Mets home game following the 9-11 atrocity, a homer that electrified both New York and the visiting Braves alike, who understood the magnitude of what Piazza had just done.
OAKLAND ATHLETICS — Have retired: Reggie Jackson (9), Rickey Henderson (24), Catfish Hunter (27), Rollie Fingers (34), Dennis Eckersley (43). Should retire: Al Simmons (7), Lefty Grove (10). Ask me when his career is over: Sonny Gray (54).
All retired A's numbers so far belong to Hall of Famers. But the A's, too, seem to be ignorant or disdainful of their franchise history. Granted that Simmons wore a number for only one season and Grove three, how does a pair of Hall of Famers — whose prime seasons were with the A's, with one just possibly the greatest pitcher baseball knew before World War II — not have their uniform numbers retired? Someone needs to send the A's back to history class.
PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES — Have retired: Richie Ashburn (1), Jim Bunning (14), Mike Schmidt (20), Steve Carlton (32), Robin Roberts (36). Should retire: Dick Allen (15), Curt Schilling (38). Ask me when their careers are over: Jimmy Rollins (11), Chase Utley (26), Cole Hamels (35).
Again, less is more: all five retired Phillies numbers belong to Hall of Famers.
Curt Schilling belongs in Cooperstown; his regular season career is a Hall of Fame record when all is said and done, and he was the very essence of a big game pitcher in the bargain.
And so, after long, long, arduous review, does Dick Allen. He was — no matter how you slice Philadelphia's 1960s racial growing pains and Allen's often clumsy ways of wrestling with them before finally wrestling his way out of Philadelphia — the best position player the 1960s Phillies had and may have been the second greatest player in franchise history.
Allen has made peace with his past and acknowledged his errors in handling the issues that finally drove him out of town and compromised his career in due course. Bunning and Schmidt have campaigned for his Hall of Fame election. Retiring his number would be the least the Phillies could do to tell him, at long enough last, "We remember, and we shouldn't forget."
PITTSBURGH PIRATES — Have retired: Billy Meyer (1), Ralph Kiner (4), Willie Stargell (8), Bill Mazeroski (9), Paul Waner (11), Pie Traynor (20), Roberto Clemente (21), Honus Wagner (33), Danny Murtaugh (40). Should retire: Jim Leyland (14), Barry Bonds (25), Elroy Face (26). Ask me when their careers are over: Andrew McCutchen (22), Gerrit Cole (45).
I can't possibly imagine the reasoning behind retiring Meyer's number, other than that managing the Pirates of the late 1940s through the mid-1950s was one of baseball's dirtiest jobs but somebody had to do it, and there's something to be said for perseverance above and beyond the call of sanity.
Well, actually I can. In his first season in Pittsburgh (he'd been considered for the Yankees after distinguished minor league managing), Meyer managed them from seventh to fourth place and was named Manager of the Year for 1948. But the Pirates collapsed again and Meyer resigned after 1952. He isn't even close to the greatest manager the franchise ever knew, but maybe that next-to-last-to-fourth climb stuck in the Pirates' institutional memory.
Bonds just might have been the greatest position player the Pirates ever knew this side of Honus Wagner, and it's absolutely fair to say he had no suspicion of actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances as a Pirate even if he did have a small rash of personality crises that impeded as often as inspired the team's brilliant National League East run of the late 1980s through the early 1990s.
Face, of course, is the best relief pitcher in franchise history. Leyland managed the Pirates back to greatness and that remarkable NL East run. 'Nuff said.
SAN DIEGO PADRES — Have retired: Steve Garvey (6), Tony Gwynn (19), Dave Winfield (31), Randy Jones (35), Trevor Hoffman (51). Should retire: Dick Williams (23).
Retiring Garvey's number is a bit of a surprise considering a) the Dodgers, for whom Garvey played the absolute meat of his career, haven't done it (perhaps they were only too embarrassed by the post-career revelations of Garvey's surrealistic sex life), and b) he wasn't even close to being the Padres' best player while he was there, though he was certainly useful.
My guess is that the number retirement is more in honor of how he helped the Padres get to their first World Series, in 1984, particularly the game-ending two-run homer he whacked off Cubs closer Lee Smith to send the League Championship Series to a deciding fifth game.
If that's the case, the Padres ought to retire the number worn by the man who managed the team to their first World Series appearance in only his third season on the bridge. Ironically, Dick Williams' number was retired by the Fort Worth Cats — for whom he played, ages earlier, in the Dodgers' farm system.
Gwynn and Winfield are no-doubt Hall of Famers, of course, and Hoffman will be soon enough. Jones, however, is a puzzle, almost. He was the Padres' first Cy Young Award winner . . . the same season he blew an elbow nerve in his pitching arm, in his final start, and he was never the same pitcher after that. Who says slop tossers are immune to the injuries the power pitchers risk?
SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS — Have retired: Bill Terry (3), Mel Ott (4), Carl Hubbell (11), Monte Irvin (20), Willie Mays (24), Juan Marichal (27), Orlando Cepeda (30), Gaylord Perry (36), Willie McCovey (44). Should retire: Barry Bonds (25). Symbolic retirements: Christy Mathewson (NY), John McGraw (NY). Ask me when their careers are over: Buster Posey (28), Sergio Romo (54), Tim Lincecum (55).
All Giants retired numbers belong to Hall of Famers, appropriately. Bonds would be a Hall of Famer if not for that issue (never mind what can or can't be proven about what they did or didn't do for him), and Posey is on the Hall of Fame track so far.
SEATTLE MARINERS — Have retired: None. Should retire: Edgar Martinez (11), Ken Griffey, Jr. (24), Randy Johnson (51), Ichiro Suzuki (51). Ask me when his career is over: Felix Hernandez (34).
It's going to prove a pickle, of course, since they wore the same number, but both the Big Unit (who's about to go into the Hall of Fame) and Ichiro (who probably will in due course) deserve the honor. Griffey should be obvious. (And, soon enough, a Hall of Famer.) So, really, should Martinez.
I've since learned the Mariners' team policy is that a player doesn't become eligible for uniform number retirement until he's eligible for Hall of Fame consideration.
ST. LOUIS CARDINALS — Have retired: Ozzie Smith (1), Red Schoendienst (2), Stan Musial (6), Enos Slaughter (9), Tony LaRussa (10), Ken Boyer (14), Dizzy Dean (17), Lou Brock (20), Whitey Herzog (24), Bruce Sutter (42), Bob Gibson (45), Gussie Busch (85). Should retire: Albert Pujols (5), Curt Flood (21). Symbolic retirement: Rogers Hornsby (RH).
Longtime owner Busch's retired number honors his age upon his death. Only Boyer among the retired numbers otherwise isn't a Hall of Famer, but he does have a case. Pujols should be bloody obvious. And if you need me to explain why Flood deserves the honor, you weren't alive or must have slept during Flood's battle against the reserve clause.
TEXAS RANGERS — Have retired: Johnny Oates (26), Nolan Ryan (34). Should retire: Ivan Rodriguez (7), Frank Howard (33).
The Rangers seem not to care much for their own Washington origins (as the second Senators franchise), but gentle giant Howard (no man ever wore a nickname — Capital Punishment — less appropriate to his personality, except maybe Harmon [The Killer] Killebrew) was the number one draw for those Senators from his arrival in a trade (with the Dodgers, for lefty Claude Osteen, when the Dodgers feared losing Sandy Koufax prematurely) to his departure in a sale to the Tigers to close out his career. Rodriguez, of course, is a Hall of Famer in waiting.
TORONTO BLUE JAYS — Have retired: Roberto Alomar. Should retire: Cito Gaston (43), Carlos Delgado (25), Roy Halladay (32). Ask me when his career is over: Jose Bautista (19).
Gaston managed the franchise to its first two and (so far) only two World Series rings — in back-to-back seasons, while he was at it. Delgado is the best first baseman in franchise history and was kept short of the Hall of Fame by late-career injuries. Halladay is no questions asked the franchise's best pitcher, ever, and a Hall of Famer in waiting, possibly.
WASHINGTON NATIONALS — Have retired: Gary Carter (8), Rusty Staub (10), Andre Dawson (10), Tim Raines (30). Should retire: Vladimir Guerrero (27). Ask me when their careers are over: Bryce Harper (34), Stephen Strasburg (37).
The Nationals aren't known to be too leery of their Montreal past, though in fairness the Expos retired Carter, Staub, Dawson, and Raines before leaving for Washington. Why Dawson shares the honor with Staub is anyone's guess; Staub was a terrific player and popular as the day was long in Montreal (they called him Le Grande Orange) but he wasn't a Hall of Famer or anywhere near one. Guerrero will be a Hall of Famer in due course, and his Montreal seasons are the major reason why.
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