What the Yankees uniform number crunch could cost MLBs managers and coaches

Before a huge American flag is unfurled in center field, before the national anthem blares, the public address announcer will introduce every player and coach from both teams. They’ll jog from their dugouts and line up along pristine foul lines, decked out in their crisp road grays and home whites, their numbers on full display. For many, Opening Day signals a fresh start. For Yankees director of clubhouse operations Lou Cucuzza, it’s become a reminder of a headache that never goes away.

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The problem? It’s those uniform numbers.

The Yankees — victims of their own success or self-aggrandizement — have retired so many that they’re running out. Trying to match players with the numbers they desire has become a near-daily concern for Cucuzza, who will watch manager Aaron Boone and every single member of the team’s constantly expanding coaching staff proudly display their uniform tops and shiny blue numbers, as is tradition, before Game 1 against the Giants at Yankee Stadium on Thursday, but then likely not again for the rest of the regular season.

Once the ceremonies of Opening Day are done, and the season has settled into its typical rhythms, Boone and the coaches will opt most days for the warmth and comfort of league-issued hoodies or pullovers, not unlike most staffs around the league. And if they aren’t going to show their numbers during games, Cucuzza wonders, why even give them numbers anymore? Wouldn’t they be better left for the players?

“It’s going to get to a point where, if the coaches are going to keep their numbers, we may get to triple digits one day,” Cucuzza said.

The Yankees have retired 22 numbers — well ahead of the second-place Cardinals, who have retired 14. New York is also keeping three out of circulation on purpose. Very few players want higher numbers typically associated with NFL offensive tackles, hockey defensemen or back-of-the-roster scrubs. And the lack of numbers left over has become such an issue for the Yankees that they have started a conversation about no longer issuing uniform numbers to managers and coaches, and it’s gaining momentum in clubhouses around the game. Cuccuzza has brought the idea to Michael Hill, the senior vice president of on-field operations for MLB. The league doesn’t want to authorize such a change just yet, a major-league source said, but it hasn’t dismissed it.

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“We threw it out there to see if it would stick,” Cucuzza said. “They said they’ll look into it.”

MLB declined comment.

Of course, the Yankees’ coaches aren’t the only ones who have mostly stashed away their uniform tops until October. While facing the Yankees in Tuesday’s exhibition at Nationals Park, Washington manager Dave Martinez spent the game in a red hoodie. Mets manager Buck Showalter, entering his 22nd year as a skipper, almost never wears his uniform top. Neither do managers A.J. Hinch of the Tigers, Gabe Kapler of the Giants, or any number of coaches and managers across the league.

“Nobody’s wearing the jerseys anymore,” Cucuzza said. “They wear them because it’s Opening Day. They’ll wear them in the postseason during introductions. That’s really it. The coaches today are probably a lot different than the coaches of yesteryear.”

Cucuzza said that he’s spoken with equipment managers from other teams who have said they would be on board with the change, and that their next step might be to present the idea formally at the upcoming Winter Meetings. Imagine, one day, Yankees legend Don Mattingly being no longer able to wear No. 23 as a Blue Jays coach because his former team complained to MLB.

The first root of Cucuzza’s agita formed well before he was born.

The Bombers retired their first number in 1939 in honor of legendary first baseman Lou Gehrig, who wore No. 4. Since then, the team has retired every single-digit number except for 0. It can’t issue No. 42, which MLB retired in honor of icon Jackie Robinson, though the Yankees also retired the number for Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera.

Then there are the numbers the Yankees have tucked away on purpose. Two of them are in reverence for recently departed franchise stars — a practice common throughout the league. They include No. 19 for Masahiro Tanaka and No. 52 for CC Sabathia. The Yankees had also shied away from giving out Brett Gardner’s No. 11 since he last played in 2021, but top prospect and new starting shortstop Anthony Volpe will don it in the majors. They held out Alex Rodriguez’s No. 13 for five years before giving it to Joey Gallo.

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The third number remains uncirculated as a mutual service to players who don’t want to wear it and the team that doesn’t want to give it out. It’s No. 69, a perfectly nice number most often associated with, well, you know. On a list of Yankees uniform numbers pinned to a corkboard in the middle of the spring training clubhouse, No. 69 is skipped over, like the 13th floor in a hotel. In 1990, reliever Alan Mills had the dubious honor of being the only player in Yankees history to wear No. 69 during an actual game. (Mills was given the number in spring training, and he held onto it when he made the Opening Day roster, but the team made him switch to No. 28 midseason. “I wanted to keep it,” Mills said. “They didn’t want me to have it in New York.”)

In total, the Yankees have 75 numbers (including No. 0, worn by pitcher Domingo Germán) from which to choose to dole out to their 40-man roster and on-field coaching staff, which has exploded to 11 people, up from just six a decade ago. Boone’s No. 17 likely stands out as the only truly desirable number on the Yankees’ coaching staff right now, but, before him, Joe Girardi wore Nos. 27 and 28, and Joe Torre had his No. 6 retired. It’s easy to imagine the Yankees bringing in another high-profile coach who might want a number that makes the problem worse.

When a player or a coach asks Cucuzza for a number, it’s usually in the lower digits, and 15 of the Yankees’ 22 retired numbers are lower than 30. Paul Lukas, the founder of Uni Watch, a website that covers sports uniforms and logos, said lower numbers have been popular for a long time in baseball because when numbers first started getting emblazoned on jerseys in the early 20th century, they correlated to a players’ spot in the batting order. Since many of the early uniforms featured lower digits, those were also the numbers of the players who were among the earliest Hall of Fame inductees. Babe Ruth wore No. 3. Mel Ott wore No. 4. Joe DiMaggio had No. 5. The highest number retired by the Yankees is Bernie Williams’ No. 51.

“And the really lower numbers, the single-digit numbers — there’s only nine of them,” Lukas said. “It’s literally a more exclusive club. It’s scarcity that creates demand.”

The problem is at its worst just before spring training. First, Cucuzza and his brother, Rob, the Yankees’ equipment manager, get together and take stock of what numbers are available, and then they do their best to spread them among newcomers, veterans and minor-leaguers. For example, this year, the Yankees invited 69 players to camp, which led to outfield prospect Jasson Dominguez and pitching prospect Yoendrys Gomez doubling up on No. 89. Tanner Tully, a lefty, was given No. 80 and could have pitched to Anthony Seigler, a catcher given the same number. And the Cucuzzas had to dredge up even more numbers for when minor-league camp players were given one-day invites to play in big-league spring games. During the regular season, however, the crunch eases because the active roster drops to 26 players.

But even then, it’s an issue for Cucuzza with Triple A call-ups and when the team trades for veterans midseason. Last year, third base coach Luis Rojas surrendered his No. 70 when reliever Jimmy Cordero asked for it. Rojas switched to No. 67.

To combat this, the Yankees have started to more regularly give out bigger numbers and just hope that they stick, the highest profile one belonging to Aaron Judge. When the Yankees gave Judge his now famous No. 99, it wasn’t only a homage to enormous stature at 6-foot-8 and 287 pounds. Judge and fellow prospect Rob Refsnyder were last-second additions to major-league spring training in 2015. Having already given out numbers to more than 60 players at that point, Cucuzza decided Judge and Refsnyder were going to get the last two eligible numbers — No. 98 and No. 99. Cucuzza was leaning toward giving Judge No. 98 when, on a whim, he looked up their heights and saw that Judge would tower over everyone else in camp.

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Judge didn’t know how close he was to becoming No. 98.

“I thought they were just playing a joke on me as the biggest guy and giving me the biggest number,” said Judge, whose own number appears on track toward retirement, considering his new captaincy.

“He made the high number sexy,” Cucuzza said.

While coaches in America’s other major sports typically wear team-issued gear (NFL) or suits and ties (NBA, NHL) during games, baseball is different. Since the early 20th century, coaches have worn the same pants, jerseys and caps as the players. It started because many of the first MLB managers were pulling double duty as players, too. And the tradition persisted because, unlike most other sports, baseball coaches have positions on the playing field at first base and at third base, and managers and pitching coaches routinely venture from the dugout to the field to confer with their own players or umpires. They’re not on the sidelines as much as they are part of the action.

It’s part of “what makes baseball unique,” Lukas said.

“A football coach doesn’t go onto the gridiron, the hockey coach doesn’t walk onto the ice and the basketball coach doesn’t go to the court,” Lukas added. “In fact, they’re often penalized if they do.”

The Athletic spoke to about a dozen managers and coaches across the league about the issue. None said they would mind surrendering their number for good.

“The game is about the players,” Boone said. “I’d be fine losing mine.”

“I understand that numbers have been around a really long time,” Kapler said, “but the players are the product in this game, and I think they should be able to wear the numbers that they want to wear almost always.”

“The jersey part of it I think is unique to our sport and makes us part of the fabric of the team,” Hinch said. “But I think the number is pretty arbitrary. Outside of a few coaches and managers who have more historical numbers based on what they’ve done in the game, I think it would be largely accepted.”

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“Maybe not in my lifetime, but maybe we’ll see the coaching staff do what the NBA is doing and what college basketball is doing,” Showalter said. “I don’t think it matters. Anything that gives players more to pick from, I’ll be in favor (of).”

Braves manager Brian Snitker said he’s heard rumblings about MLB taking numbers off coaches’ backs so players would have access to more of what he called “prime numbers.” Snitker, however, said he thought it would look strange, especially if base coaches had to don blank backs.

“If you ask a lot of the coaches that played,” Snitker said, “it would be weird for those guys because they’ve had a number on their back their whole career. They put a number in their underwear and T-shirts and all that stuff. It would be weird for that (coaches’) room, because they’ve had a number their whole life.”

“I will tell you,” Hinch said, “the more teams that I see go to putting coaches in the 90s to open up the lower numbers for the players and all the retired numbers, the more that the argument of just eliminating them just makes a lot of sense.”

Despite the trouble, Cucuzza does, in fact, appreciate the Yankees’ storied past.

“We’ve got such a great history and so many great players,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, if we’re retiring numbers, we’re doing something right here.”

But there’s just one thing he would rather avoid.

“I would hate to see three digits.”

— The Athletic’s Will Sammon, Andrew Baggarly and David O’Brien contributed to this report.

(Illustration of Ron Guidry, Joe DiMaggio, Derek Jeter and Joe Torre: Eamonn Daulton / The Athletic; Photos: Vincent Laforet, Mark Peterson, Adam Hunger, Hy Peskin, Jim McIsaac, Al Bello, Focus on Sport / Getty Images

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