Jersey Experts: Changing Numbers on Uniform

[joelsabi]

Morning,

I know that equipment managers have changed numbers on jerseys in the past. How frequent did changes of number and under what circumstances. Are there common scenarios when this would occur? Thanks in advance.

[suave1477]

I think the most common scenario would be to recycle the Jerseys because the team was too cheap to constantly buy new uniforms so it was a way of cutting corners. IMO
Also they would recycle the Jerseys down to the minors so they wouldn't have to go out and buy brand new uniforms for them.

I would say years ago it was very common maybe not as much today because teams see now they can cash in on the Jersey as it is.

I know the Yankees did it a lot. They would recycle the Jerseys to the late call ups and such.

Example I have a bunch of 70's Yankees Jerseys and I would say 75% of them had number changes. - The new numbers are all high numbers (Example 70, 77, 75.) Which normally they give those numbers out to the players they really do not expect to last long or last minute call ups.

But you can see under them they had low numbers originally and the original players name in the collar tag.

[ironmanfan]

I realize that this situation is certainly unique, but I have a 1988 road grey GU uniform top of Billy Ripken # 7 with the evidence of # 3 underneath. His father, Cal Ripken Sr. started the season as manager wearing # 7 and Billy wearing # 3...After six games, Ripken Sr. was fired and Billy could not stand the thought of another player wearing that number, so he switched from # 3 to # 7. It's one of my neater items and it actually was on display in the Ripken Museum in Aberdeen, MD while they were open from 1996 thru 2003.

The ironic thing was that I certainly knew the story of this when I purchased the jersey is 1990 or so, however the dealer who sold it to me was not and he actually gave me a discount (I didn't even ask for one) due to the "number change" that he missed earlier....