How do you feel about the NY Yankees retiring numbers of non 'Legends' and NON HOFers?

[KGoldin]

KGoldin - #2 is not currently retired by the New York Yankees. http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/nyy/h...ed_numbers.jsp

I was at his last game
I thought they made an announcement that no Yankee will ever wear #2 again
so they HAVE retired his number, however I guess they want to have a derek jeter day for ticket sales and tv ratings to have a formal ceremony

[Roady]

Didn't they put a plaque up for Nelson Mandela?

[godwulf]

And away we go!

[sox83cubs84]

To a lesser degree, we have the same thing here with the White Sox. Several non-HOFers have retired numbers, including Minnie Minoso, Billy Pierce, and Paul Konerko all hve retired numbers, plus Harold Baines had his number retired after the first time he was traded from the White Sox (1989), and played for over a decade afterwards. On the other hand, the Cubs did not retire Andre Dawson's #8 for the Cubs because he didn't go into the Hall of Fame as a Cub. He wanted to, but Copperstown overruled him and he's as a result enshrined as an Expo.

Dave Miedema

[volunteer]

I would put Paul O'Neill and Mike Mussina ahead of a lot of those other guys.

[bgold]

Guys like Bernie and Andy are enshrined because all of the kids who watched them play are now professionals/married and will come out to the stadium with THEIR kids and spend $$$. The Yankees aren't drawing as well as they have in the past (even on the road) and enshrining someone like Guidry (however deserving), does nothing for their bottom line.

It's a shame that Monument Park and retired numbers have been reduced to a marketing ploy.

At the end of the day, it's a business. We all love sports, but this is an industry that is driven by profit, not the "right thing".

And speaking of the right thing, the fact that the Mets only retire HOF players makes me sick. Handing out Keith's #17 (for example) to anyone with a pair of cleats is an injustice to his time as a Met.

So there! I make no sense and am happy to play both sides.

Cheers

[coxfan]

I've felt for a long time that teams in general should honor names and numbers through plaques, etc. but not retire numbers. The system's front-loaded, in that later players may be less likely in time to get their numbers retired, because the team's running short of numbers! That problem has actually occurred with some college football teams. Recently the ESPN baseball commentators were half-jokingly suggest that the Yankees might have to go to square roots, Pi, fractions, etc. for future numbers.

a couple of years ago in a similar thread,I pointed out an historical analogy. After the Romans renamed July and August for Julius Carsar and Augustus Caesar, they faced an awkward dilemma: they had to offer the next month to the next emperor. Fortunately Tiberius refused, saying they'd run out of months before they'd run out of emperors! So September through December were left unchanged. ( Source: Will Durant's volume " Caesar and Christ")

That historical analogy points out an additional problem: Once standards are lowered for anyone, it becomes awkward to raise them again in future.

[KGoldin]

Last two posts hit my thoughts on the head
Standards being lowered to appeal to a younger audience or for marketing hurts the significance of the achievement
and I'm serious
At this rate they will have to go to triple digits on uniforms

[Buccaneer Madden]

To me the Yankees can do whatever they want. If the Mariners wanted to retire Jay Buhner or Edgar Martinez's numbers that would be fine with me and neither of them are going to the HOF but they meant a LOT to the team and the city.

[gingi79]

The Yankees are going to have 21 numbers retired for 23 players. (Mo and Robinson #42 and Dickey and Berra #8) Just to compare, the "Yanks of the NHL", the Montreal Canadiens have only 14 numbers retired.

Also the other teams with a double digit number of retired numbers in MLB are the Giants and Dodgers with only 10 each!

My only two thoughts are that they did win 25 titles in their first 100 seasons (27 total now) Conversely, people seem to forget how many Yankee greats were cherry picked off of other, smaller market teams.