Jersey retirements are the ultimate honor

Sports franchises honor the best of their best by retiring jersey numbers, meaning no player or coach will ever don that number again. It's become a tradition in sports, a player, executive performs at a high level for a sports franchise for many years, maybe he leads them to a championship and gets into the hall of fame. How does that team honor a successful player or executive? Retire his jersey number. Meaning no player will ever wear that uniform digit or digits again. Now there are some exceptions. Jersey's in many sports have been retired twice by teams, either because they weren't retiring jersey's at the time, or a player has asked for and received permission to wear a previously honored jersey. Each team kind of sets it's only policy. The practice of jersey retirement's become very popular, for example, the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball recently retired the number 46 for pitcher Andy Pettitte, it's the 20th such uniform taken out of service by the team, the most in the majors. The Yankees have retired the #8, twice. The number 42 is also dually retired, for Mariano Rivera, and for Jackie Robinson. The number 42 was retired throughout baseball in 1997 for Robinson, but those that were currently wearing it, like Rivera were able to keep it until they retired. It's thought that the #2 will soon be taken out of service for Derek Jeter. If and when that happens, the lowest number available for a new Yankees player would be #11. Some players in baseball are honored by their teams, but not by number. In several cases the player pre-dated numbers, which weren't put on uniforms until the 1930's. For example Ty Cobb didn't have a number, so just his name appears on the wall of honor at Detroit's Comerica Park. In the NBA, the Boston Celtics, one of the storied franchises in league history, have the most numbers retired of any North American Franchise, with 21. Included in the honor roll is the team's founder and first owner Walter A Brown, and its' most successful coach Red Auerbach. Of the retired numbers in Boston, only 2 were not worn by a player or executive in the basketball hall of fame. The highest number ever retired in the NBA belongs to Jerry Sloan, his 1 thousand two hundred twenty three hangs in the rafters in Utah, no he didn't wear that number, and it probably wouldn't fit on a jersey. It represents the number of coaching victories he owns with the Jazz. His playing number, 4 is retired by the Chicago Bulls. It becomes more of a difficult process to retire numbers in the NFL. Currently the Chicago Bears lead the way with 14 jersey's taken out of commission. The team retired legendary player and coach Mike Ditka's number 89 in December 20-13 and it will likely be their last. Teams are running out of numbers. In the NFL, a policy in place since 1973 says that numbers on the jersey correspond with the position played. So for example quarterbacks can only wear the numbers between 1 and 19, the same goes for kickers. The league's policy had to be tweaked a bit, allowing receivers to start wearing numbers between 10 and 19 along with 80 to 89 because so many numbers were being retired. NFL teams are now opting for enshrining players in a ring of honor at their home stadium. Names and numbers of honored players are displayed on the walls the ring the inside of the stadium. Not be left out is the NHL, where the Montreal Canadiens lead all franchises with 15 retired numbers, and even some of those were retired twice. The league decided in 2000 to retire the number for perhaps it's greatest player ever. No NHL team can give out #99, in honor of Wayne Gretzky. Another interesting fact, only Wilt Chamberlain and Nolan Ryan have ever had their jersey's retired by 3 different franchises. Chamberlain's #13 was hung up in the rafters by the Philadelphia 76'ers, Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors. Ryan had his jersey number 30 retired by the California Angels and his #34 by both the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros. The practice of jersey retirements has taken place even in Auto Racing, Cricket, Rugby and even in college sports. So what's in a number for major sports franchises? Seemingly everything. I'm Andy Masur. This is Rivet.

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