Retiring a player’s number is one of the signature honors of sports, maybe just a step below Hall of Fame status.
The standards? They often depend on who’s doing the retiring.
Shortly after the Lakers recently announced plans to retire Pau Gasol’s No. 16 next March 7, this came tumbling into the inbox: “I am mystified. Here are the Lakers retiring Pau Gasol’s number 16…..BEFORE they put Michael Cooper’s jersey in the rafters!! Where is the justice in this….what are they thinking!! He was a crucial cog in the Showtime Lakers wheel…without his defense and clutch three-point shooting, they wouldn’t have dominated the 1980’s NBA.”
It’s a good point, and maybe the dividing line should be more clear, but consider that the Lakers’ standards are fairly stringent. They’ve retired 12 jerseys (including both numbers worn by Kobe Bryant), plus Chick Hearn’s microphone, plus a banner honoring five players and a coach from the Minneapolis Lakers’ dynasty. All so honored are in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and I’m guessing Lakers management is reasonably certain Gasol will ultimately make it to Springfield as well.
(And if Coop is worthy of consideration, as he should be, doesn’t Robert Horry have a case as well?)
Then there are the Dodgers, where it’s stated policy. Nothing but Hall of Famers will do, with one exception: Jim Gilliam, a player and coach with the club for 25 years when he died of a massive brain hemorrhage just before the 1978 World Series. The team retired his No. 19 before Game 1 of that series with the Yankees.
(The policy is why Steve Garvey’s No. 6 is still in use in L.A. but is retired in San Diego. That’s confusing to fans in both cities.)
But two men who did make the Hall of Fame representing the franchise are not in that display located down Dodger Stadium’s left-field line and should be.
• Outfielder Zack Wheat played in Brooklyn from 1909 through ’26, still holds club records for games, at-bats, hits, doubles, triples, and total bases, and remains in the Brooklyn/L.A. top 10 in six offensive categories.
• Pitcher Dazzy Vance, who didn’t reach the big leagues to stay until he was 31 – by way of comparison, Sandy Koufax retired when he was 30 – won 197 games in 14 seasons, all but seven of those with Brooklyn, including a 28-win season in 1924. He led the league in ERA three times and strikeouts on seven occasions and remains among the franchise’s top five all-time in wins, strikeouts, complete games, innings pitched and shutouts.
Wheat finished his career before players began wearing numbers. Vance wore 15 for the bulk of his Brooklyn career and 21 when he came back to the club in 1935. The club could honor them with the old Brooklyn “B,” if it wished, but it should honor them nevertheless.
And, of course, there’s Fernando Valenzuela, whose success and popularity not only had an impact on the field but in the stands, winning over a Latino community that had held a grudge against the Dodgers for years after the move to L.A. If anyone deserves to bypass the Cooperstown mandate, just for his impact on the franchise and on the community, Fernando’s the guy.
His number 34 is already unofficially retired because no player has worn it since Valenzuela left the club in 1990. It’s time to make it official.
In most cases but not all, being in a Hall of Fame or close to it is what it takes.
The Rams have retired eight numbers, all but a couple of them from before the 1995 move to St. Louis, and the only one not currently in Canton is Isaac Bruce, who played his first Rams season in Anaheim and the rest in Missouri. Each of the Chargers’ four honorees is in the Hall of Fame: Dan Fouts, Lance Alworth, LaDainian Tomlinson and the late Junior Seau, all from the franchise’s 56 seasons in San Diego.
Each of the Kings’ retired numbers (including Wayne Gretzky’s 99, retired throughout the NHL) belong to Hall of Famers save for Dave Taylor and, soon, Dustin Brown. The Ducks’ have three numbers in the rafters and they’re all Hall of Famers, too: Teemu Selanne’s 8, Paul Kariya’s 9 and Scott Niedermayer’s 27.
Maybe it’s better to be picky. The Yankees have retired 23 numbers and while some are first-ballot Hall of Famers – Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Jeter, etc. – the most recent was Paul O’Neill, who probably isn’t getting into Cooperstown but was a key part of four Yankees’ World Series championship teams. That counts.
The Boston Celtics have 25 retired numbers – or eight more than championships won – including original owner Walter Brown, coach/executive Red Auerbach and broadcaster Johnny Most. (And really, if you lived in L.A. in the 1960s, you’d probably have preferred that they went ahead and retired No. 6 right then, with Bill Russell in it. As it stands, the league will retire Russell’s number this season, so will the Lakers display a green No. 6 on their jersey wall?)
Then there’s the other extreme. The Clippers haven’t yet retired a number, and maybe they’re just waiting until they have their own building – or when Blake Griffin and Chris Paul retire from the NBA – to break that embargo.
Jersey retirements can be fluid. The Galaxy shelved Cobi Jones’ No. 13 in 2007, but brought it out of mothballs for Jermaine Jones in 2017, with Cobi Jones’ approval. Similarly, USC football – whose retired numbers are reserved for Heisman Trophy winners – has done so twice. Mike Garrett, then the athletic director, approved when defensive back Darnell Bing requested his retired No. 20 in 2003. More recently, wide receiver Jordan Addison asked for and received No. 3 this year with the blessing of Carson Palmer.
“I’ll say, that was a great conversation,” Addison said earlier this month. “I don’t really want to get into too much detail with it, but I’m just going to make sure that he knows that he put the number on the right person.”
As noted, what makes perfect sense to one franchise or one city creates puzzled looks elsewhere. When the Kings announced plans last month to not only retire Brown’s number on Feb. 11 but unveil a statue of him outside of their downtown L.A. arena, a Toronto columnist tweeted, “Seriously? A statue? Why?”
I pointed out that the statue would likely show Brown lifting the Stanley Cup as Kings captain, and wondered if anyone in Toronto – whose last Cup came a few months before the Kings came into the league in 1967 – would remember how that went.
It likely will show him lifting the Cup.
Anyone in Toronto remember how that works?
— Jim_Alexander (@Jim_Alexander) July 26, 2022
If a number retirement – or a statue, or a Ring of Honor celebration, or even a “Night” – makes sense to the locals, it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks. And I keep going back to the first time I walked into Denver’s arena years ago, looked at the rafters, noted a No. 40 honoring Byron Beck and thought, “Byron who?”
He was a 6-foot-9 center/forward who played at the University of Denver and joined the American Basketball Association’s Denver franchise in 1967. He averaged 11.5 points and 7.0 rebounds in 10 seasons. But he was one of just six players to play in all nine ABA seasons and stayed around long enough to accompany the Nuggets into the NBA.
Elsewhere, he might have been just a guy. In Denver, he was a symbol of the city’s pro basketball history. Good for him, and good for them.
And if those retired numbers either stir memories or inspire some research … well, isn’t that the point?
jalexander@scng.com
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