@@Milwaukee Brewers

Retired numbers

  • March 25, 2024


I admittedly think about this too often. The Brewers last retired a number prior to the 2015 season in honor of Bud Selig, the team’s founder. Every retired number is associated with a Hall of Famer and the Uecker “50 years in baseball” honor came sometime after Uecker received the HOF’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting (why not just retire the number 50?)

My questions are:

-If retired numbers are reserved for Hall of Famers, shouldn’t Ted Simmons’ #23 be retired? He wasn’t primarily a Brewer but neither were Hank Aaron or Rollie Fingers and he still had a very impactful tenure

-Is there real official protocol for deciding number retirements like there is for the Wall of Honor?

-Why not just officially retire #17 for Jim Gantner instead of keeping it out of circulation? Or why not just keep it in circulation since he isn’t a HOFer? Will Ryan Braun’s #8 get the same treatment?

I love the tradition of number retirements in sports so this is always an interesting conversation to me. I think guys like Braun, Simmons, Cecil Cooper, hell even Jeff Cirillo deserve some consideration for this prodigious honor.

9 comments

  1. Pretty telling that there isn’t a single name that is, “well of COURSE that one!!!” In thirty years. Every name I came up with had a pretty simple, “yeah…okay maybe…but…” argument. Here’s hoping for some of the new guys!

  2. My personal question is why that font is still used at the park. The club doesn’t use it anymore and none of the players ever wore it. Not a big deal, I’m just curious.

  3. Rollie got a Cy Young and MVP while on the Brewers; Ted Simmons may have made the HOF but his years in Milwaukee weren’t all that spectacular. Hank Aaron got his retired more because of his time with the Braves. He was loved for years in Milwaukee, the final two as a Brewer just finished his career.

  4. It’s funny to imagine a new relief pitcher wanting to be number 50 and we don’t let him because Bob Uecker spent 50 years in the booth

  5. It’s kinda crazy that only 2 players in 50+ years of Brewers baseball have warranted having their numbers retired (props to Rollie and Hank but you don’t really think of the Brewers when you think of their careers). Personally, I would reserve the honor strictly for players that go into the Hall of Fame wearing Brewers hats. They have the Wall of Honor for guys that accomplished a lot but weren’t truly upper echelon players and that’s fine.

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