Magglio Ordonez: Pinko Socialist!!

According to whom? 23 is retired for Horton and 11 is retired for Sparky. There's nothing anywhere that honors Gibby or Freehan.

 

Never wore one. He's listed in RCF with the other Hall of Famers who have Tigers caps on their plaques - Manush, Heilmann, Cochrane, Jennings and Kell, plus Ernie Harwell, Sparky's No. 11 and Jackie Robinson's No. 42. Harwell does have a statue in the stadium's main entryway.

 

Did Ty Cobb ever actually wear a number, though?

 

I thought there had been some kind of statement to that effect, but I checked and apparently not. There certainly won't be now, since Gibson hates the current Tiger management and the feeling is mutual. And Freehan is pretty much forgotten by anybody younget than 50.

 

Newhouser's was retired in 1997, one year before he died.

 

The first two teams to wear uniform numbers on a permanent basis in MLB were the Yankees and Indians in 1929 (the spring after Ty Cobb retired, coincidentally).

Uniform numbers in MLB didn't become universal until 1937, when the Philadelphia A's became the last holdouts to relent.

 

So why does Ty Cobb have a retired number? Or, why doesn't Sam Crawford?

 

As I said before, the Tigers for a long time hesitated to retire anyone's number since they didn't have a number for Cobb they could retire and if they couldn't honor the greatest player in team history (a distinction that is perhaps debatable) then why honor anyone. Since there was later support to honor other players, the team started honoring a few more, but included Cobb by putting his name over a blank spot of wall in left-center along with all the other retired numbers.

 

That doesn't answer the latter question. Sam Crawford was one hell of a player.

 

Yeah, probably better than Kaline and certainly better than Horton.

 

When they moved into the new stadium, they decided to erect statues to the players with retired numbers. It seemed stupid to have a statue row of the franchise's greatest players without Cobb, so they put one up with a blank where the number would have gone. Sadly, most Tigers fans don't look at the list of statues and say "Where's Sam Crawford?" so he gets honored with the other Hall of Famers.

 

That's bullshit. I'm going to start a campaign.