Number (sports)
In team sports, the number, often referred to as the uniform number, squad number, jersey number, shirt number, sweater number, or similar is the number worn on a player's uniform, to identify and distinguish each player from others wearing the same or similar uniforms. The number is typically displayed on the rear of the jersey, often accompanied by the surname. Sometimes it is also displayed on the front and/or sleeves, or on the player's shorts or headgear. It is used to identify the player to officials, other players, official scorers, and spectators; in some sports, it is also indicative of the player's position.
The first use of jersey numbers is credited to a football team from New Zealand called the Nelson Football Club, who began wearing numbered jerseys in 1911. The numbers were used to help the spectators identify the players on the field, as well as to help the referee keep track of fouls and other infractions.
The International Federation of Football History and Statistics, an organization of association football historians, traces the origin of numbers to a 1911 association football match in Sydney, although photographic evidence exists of numbers being used in Australia as early as May 1903 in a Fitzroy v Collingwood Australian rules football match. Player numbers were used in a Queensland vs. New Zealand rugby match played on 17 July 1897, in Brisbane, Australia, as reported in the ''Brisbane Courier.''
Association football
In association football, the first record of numbered jerseys date back to 1911, with Australian teams Sydney Leichhardt and HMS Powerful being the first to use squad numbers on their backs. One year later, numbering in football was mandated in New South Wales.In South America, Argentina was the first country with numbered shirts. It was during the Scottish team Third Lanark's tour to South America of 1923, they played a friendly match versus a local combined team on 10 June. Both squads were numbered from 1–11, and both goalkeepers wore "1".
North America saw its first football match with squad numbers on 30 March 1924, when St. Louis Vesper Buick and Fall River F.C. played the National Challenge Cup, although only the local team wore numbered shirts.
In England, Arsenal coach Herbert Chapman brought the idea of numbered shirts, worn for the first time when his team played Sheffield Wednesday in 1928. Arsenal wore shirts from 1 to 11 while their rivals' numbered from 12 to 22. Similar numbering criteria were used in the 1933 FA Cup Final between Everton and Manchester City. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1939–40 season when the Football League ruled that squads had to wear numbers for each player.
Numbers were traditionally assigned based on a player's position or reputation on the field, with the starting 11 players wearing 1 to 11, and the substitutes wearing bigger numbers. The goalkeeper would generally wear number 1, then defenders, midfield players and forwards in ascending order.
The 1950 FIFA World Cup was the first FIFA competition to see squad numbers for each players, but persistent numbers would not be issued until the 1954 World Cup, where each man in a country's 22-man squad wore a specific number from 1 to 22 for the duration of the tournament. After some teams such as Argentina fielded non-goalkeeper players with number 1, FIFA ruled that number 1 had to be assigned to a goalkeeper exclusively. That change was first applied in the 1990 World Cup. The rule is still active for competitions organised by the body.
In 1993, England's Football Association switched to persistent squad numbers, abandoning the mandatory use of 1–11 for the starting line-up. The persistent number system became standard in the FA Premier League in the 1993–94 season, with names printed above the numbers. Most European top leagues adopted the system over the next five years.
In addition to "1" being commonly assigned to the starting goalkeeper, it is also common for defenders to wear numbers in the lower single digits, for strikers to wear "7" or "9" or "11", and for a team's central playmaker to wear "10".
It is common for players to change numbers within a club as their career progresses. For example, Cesc Fàbregas was first assigned the number 57 on arrival at Arsenal in 2003. On promotion to the first team squad he was switched to number 15 before inheriting his preferred number 4 following the departure of Patrick Vieira.
Very big numbers, the most common being 88, are often reserved and used as placeholders, when a new player has been signed and played by the manager prior to having a formal squad number. However, in some countries these high numbers are well-used, in some cases because the player's preferred number is already taken or for other reasons. On joining A.C. Milan, Andriy Shevchenko, Ronaldinho and Mathieu Flamini all wore numbers reflecting the year of their birth, because their preferred numbers were already being worn.
Australian rules football
Squad numbers first appeared on Australian rules football guernseys when clubs travelled interstate. Players traditionally wear numbers on the backs of their guernseys, although in some competitions, such as the WAFL, may feature teams who wear smaller numbers on the front, usually on one side of the chest.The number being worn is not relevant to the player's position on the ground, although some clubs will allocate a prestigious number to the team captain - examples include Port Adelaide, who assign number 1, and Richmond, who traditionally allocate number 17 in honour of former captain Jack Dyer. In these situations, it is customary for players who relinquish the captaincy to switch to another number.
AFL clubs generally do not retire numbers, and instead make a ceremony of continuity, featuring retiring champions "passing on" their famous guernsey numbers to chosen successors, usually at a club function or press conference. Prestigious numbers are handed on to highly touted draftees or young up-and-coming players who are shown to have promise and may share certain traits with the previous wearer, such as position or playing style. For example, as of 2010, Michael Hurley inherited the number 18 jumper left vacant by the retired Matthew Lloyd, effectively keeping the number 18 in Essendon's goal-square for another era.
Retired numbers include Collingwood's number 42, worn by Darren Millane, who died in a car accident in 1991. Geelong temporarily retired the number 5 between 1998 and 2005 after the retirement of Gary Ablett Sr.
Sons of famous players will often take on their father's number, especially if they play at the same club. Sergio Silvagni and his son Stephen, for example, both wore number 1 for Carlton, with Stephen's son Jack later following suit. Matthew Scarlett wore his father John's number 30 at Geelong. In contrast, some sons of famous players prefer to take on other numbers in the hopes of forging their own identity, and to reduce the burden of having to fulfill high expectations. Notable examples of this are Gary Ablett Jr. at Geelong who wore number 29 and number 4 instead of his father's number 5, and Jobe Watson at Essendon, who passed up Tim's No. 32 in favour of number 4.
The use of numbers higher than 60 is very rare. In 2017 eight indigenous players wore the number 67 as part of the Sir Doug Nicholls' Indigenous Round. This was to recognise the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Australian referendum confirming the citizenship of Indigenous Australians. Number 65 was worn by Andrew Witts of Collingwood for one game in 1985, before switching to 45 for the remainder of the season. There is an apocryphal story that number 82 was worn by Ernie Taylor of Richmond, in round 10 of 1925 against North Melbourne, but clubs do not have guernseys with numbers that high available for one-off games, and it is more likely this number was number 32 and misread by a local journalist.
Established players will often trade the bigger numbers allocated to rookies for more prestigious lower numbers later in their career. Mal Brown of Claremont in the WAFL demonstrated a blatant disregard for this practice in 1975, trading his normal number 55 for number 100.
Baseball
In baseball, players generally wear large numbers on the back of their jersey. Some jerseys may also feature smaller numerals in other locations, such as on the sleeves, pants, or front of the shirt. The purpose of numerals in baseball is to allow for easy identification of players. Some players have been so associated with specific numbers that their jersey number has been officially "retired". The first team to retire a number was the New York Yankees, which retired Lou Gehrig's No. 4 in 1939.According to common tradition, single-digit numbers are worn by position players but rarely by pitchers, and numbers higher than 60 are rarely worn at all. Bigger numbers are worn during spring training by players whose place on the team is uncertain, and sometimes are worn during the regular season by players recently called up from the minor leagues; however, such players usually change to a more traditional number once it becomes clear that they will stay with the team. However, this tradition is not enforced by any rule, and exceptions have never been rare. Moreover, numbers greater than 60 have become much more popular among Major League players since 2010, for a variety of cultural reasons. Examples include stars Kenley Jansen, Aaron Judge, Luis Robert, Josh Hader, Nick Anderson, Seth Lugo, Jose Abreu, and Hyun-Jin Ryu. At the other end of the number line, Blake Snell in 2018 became the first pitcher wearing a single-digit number to appear in the All-Star Game and the first to win the Cy Young Award.
In the early years of baseball, teams did not wear uniform numbers. Teams experimented with uniform numbers during the first two decades of the 20th century, with the first Major League team to use them being the 1916 Cleveland Indians which used them on their left sleeves for a few weeks before abandoning the experiment. Again in 1923, the St. Louis Cardinals tried out uniforms with small numbers on the sleeves, but the players did not like them, and they were removed. For the 1929 Major League Baseball season both the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians put numbers on their jerseys, the first two teams to do so, beginning a trend that was completed by 1937, when the Philadelphia Athletics became the last team to permanently add numbers to their jerseys.
The 1929 New York Yankees handed out uniform numbers based on a player's position in the batting order; which is why Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig wore their famous numbers 3 and 4; they batted third and fourth respectively that season. Numbers 1–8 were assigned to the regular starters at their respective batting order positions, numbers 9 and 10 were assigned to the Yankees' two backup catchers, while pitchers and backup fielders were assigned higher numbers. This is one source of the tradition against pitchers wearing single-digit numbers.
Baseball players choose their own number for personal reasons, or accept a number assigned by the team. The reasons that players choose a particular number vary widely. Bill Voiselle in the 1940s wore No. 96 in honour of his hometown of Ninety Six, South Carolina. Hall-of-Fame catcher Carlton Fisk in the 1980s wore No. 72 with the Chicago White Sox because a teammate was already using the No. 27 that Fisk had worn with his prior team, the Boston Red Sox. A number of players, often with iconoclastic personalities or with names featuring the letter "O", have worn No. 0 or No. 00, which are generally uncommon. Catcher Benito Santiago switched from No. 9 to No. 09 and wore the latter from 1991 to 1994 in an effort to make his uniform more comfortable, the only major league baseball player known to have worn a leading zero. Eddie Gaedel, the midget at the centre of an infamous stunt by Bill Veeck's St. Louis Browns, is the only known major league player to have worn a fraction as his jersey number during his only major league plate appearance. Jerseys with three numbers are prohibited, although Bill Lee once tried to change his number to 337 since it spells "Lee" upside down.
In 2020, Yankees pitcher Miguel Yajure became the first player to appear in an MLB game wearing No. 89, the last available unused number.
In Nippon Professional Baseball, the Japanese major leagues, No. 18 is often reserved for the ace pitcher. Accordingly, a number of Japanese pitchers in MLB have worn the number. Examples include Kenta Maeda and Daisuke Matsuzaka.
The number 42 is retired throughout organized baseball in honour of Jackie Robinson. Most independent professional leagues, though not bound by the rulings of the Commissioner of Baseball, have followed suit.
During spring training in 2023, the Yankees' clubhouse director Lou Cucuzza suggested that teams should no longer be required to issue uniform numbers for non-player personnel. With the Yankees having retired 22 numbers, and with three other numbers being kept out of circulation, that left 75 numbers available for current personnel. The number crunch was most apparent in spring training, when the Yankees invited 69 players. Cucuzza noted that many Yankees coaches choose not to wear their full uniforms in the dugout during games. Also, many managers and coaches throughout MLB wear a hoodie over their uniform top. Cucuzza pitched the idea to an MLB executive; reportedly, MLB did not want to immediately make such a change, but did not formally turn it down.