As cases for Roy Halladay and Dick Allen point out, baseball’s retired numbers are multiplying

On March 22, 1962, in Clearwater, Fla., at a postgame cocktail party attended by writers and club personnel, the Phillies retired their first number, Robin Roberts’ No. 36.

There was no hype for the future Hall of Fame pitcher, then a 35-year-old hoping to extend his career with the Yankees, only a brief speech from Phils owner Bob Carpenter, whose words unintentionally indicted his franchise’s history.

“This is an honor for the Phillies,” Carpenter said. “They’ve had [Grover Cleveland] Alexander, Roberts and one or two others. But that’s about it.”

Despite the informality, it was a rare moment. At the time, 30-plus years after the adoption of numbered uniforms, Roberts was only the 10th baseball player to earn such a tribute, joining such legends as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Feller.

But like salaries and strikeouts, inflation has had an impact on this baseball custom. Once an exclusive honor, the total of honorees, which was 18 through 1969, has increased more than 1,000% since. Excluding Jackie Robinson’s universally shelved 42, the figure now tops 200.

The Phillies will add to that total Thursday when, in a break with a club policy that had limited the honor to Hall of Famers, they will retire Dick Allen’s No. 15. Earlier this year, the team said they would do the same with Roy Halladay’s No. 34.

This fast-growing demographic, as you’d expect, includes scores of Hall of Famers and many who are just a notch below. But there’s also a guy who hit .233 and won barely 40 percent of his games as a manager, a catcher who never had a home run, a pitcher who won just nine big-league games, plus managers, a coach, and even a “senior adviser.”

Not counting Robinson, the Yankees have set aside 21 numbers, the Marlins none. Multiple teams have paid tribute to players such as Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, and Frank Robinson. Owners Augie Busch (85) and Gene Autry (26), who never wore them, have numbers retired in their honor. So do players such as Willard Hershberger, Thurman Munson, and Jim Umbricht, all of whom died prematurely.

Many great players from the past are ignored, some because their careers predated the universal adoption of uniform numbers in 1932. Others, like a lot of Philadelphia A’s, played for teams that subsequently relocated.

For better or worse, the concept, initiated by hockey’s Toronto Maple Leafs in 1934 and borrowed by the Yankees five years later, is now a commonplace baseball ritual. But with no standardized guidelines, it’s also as arbitrary as the strike zone and, as the Halladay case in particular proved, often as controversial as Hall of Fame elections.

Who gets his number retired is a question each team answers for itself. Should it be limited to Hall of Famers? What about popular players who die young or tragically? Is longevity with a team a factor? If so, what’s the cutoff? Should non-players be included? How should careers that predated uniform numbers be recognized? Are teams treating the custom as a solemn duty or merely an easy way to bump attendance?

The Halladay debate raged for days on social media and talk radio. The pitcher, who died in 2017 when his amphibious plane crashed, spent just four years in Philadelphia, and the Blue Jays already had retired his number.

Had he been here long enough to warrant such a distinction? If so, then what about Jim Thome, whose on-field circumstances mirror Halladay’s? And if the Phils were going to make exceptions, how about Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard?

If confusion engulfs the practice, the blame might trace to 1954, when, for still unexplained reasons, the Pittsburgh Pirates retired Billy Meyer’s No. 1. It seems now that Meyer might have been this disorder’s patient zero, the source of the fog now shrouding what once seemed a clear-cut tradition.

It all started with Ace Bailey, a rugged Toronto Maple Leafs winger who fractured his skull and ended his hockey career during a December 1933 brawl. Two months later, at an emotional Maple Leaf Gardens ceremony, his No. 6 was retired, the first time a pro athlete was so honored.

In 1939, baseball’s Yankees did the same for Gehrig, after his fatal diagnosis. In the 1940s, numbers were retired for three more New York legends – Ruth, Carl Hubbell, and Mel Ott – and for the game’s first and only in-season suicide victim – Cincinnati’s Hershberger.

DiMaggio joined the exclusive group in 1952. Then in 1954, without a ceremony or a news release, the Pirates retired Meyer’s number, and if there was any logic behind the custom, it splintered like a cheap bat.

Meyer was a baseball lifer who always looked 20 years older than the Baseball Encyclopedia claimed. His resume explained why.

Living through two of the most dreadful seasons in modern baseball history likely aged the Tennessean, who in a 113-game career with the Philadelphia A’s batted .233 and made 25 errors. He was a reserve catcher on the 1916 A’s, who compiled the sport’s all-time worst record, 36-117. Then in 1952, his last of five seasons in an equally brief and just-as-inept managerial career, his Pirates went 42-112, the sixth-worst season ever.

While Meyer’s big-league playing stats certainly weren’t worthy of special tribute, his managerial numbers were equally bad. His five Pirates teams finished fourth, sixth, eighth, seventh, and eighth. He’d fared better managing in the minors, but not in Pittsburgh’s organization. In the end, sportswriters concluded, he was rewarded for his affability.

“He was one of the best-liked men ever to come into baseball,” a Pittsburgh Press sportswriter noted at the time. “He was popular with everybody: players, managers, coaches, owners, writers, umpires and the fans.”

Feller and Honus Wagner joined the club later in the 1950s. Pittsburgh’s legendary shortstop had never worn a number as a player, but he’d been No. 6 in a brief coaching stint and that’s what was hung.

In addition to Roberts’, there were seven number retirements in the 1960s, including two for cancer victims who’d died in 1964 – Jim Umbricht, 33, a journeyman Houston pitcher; and Fred Hutchinson, the Reds manager, who was 45.

Another Houston pitcher, Don Wilson, had his number retired in 1975 after he was accidentally asphyxiated in his garage. In 1979, the Phillies lofted Richie Ashburn’s No. 1.

The custom gathered steam on June 4, 1972, when the Dodgers retired three numbers simultaneously – Robinson, Sandy Koufax, and Roy Campanella.

Manager Casey Stengel was lauded in 1970 by the Mets, whom he had managed to nothing but last-place finishes. That was five years before the Yankees, a team he had guided to seven world championships, did the same.

In 1982, the Angels retired No. 26 (as in a 26th man on the roster) for original owner Gene Autry. Three years later, Cardinals owner Gussie Busch, who died in 1984, had No. 85 (his age at death) retired.

Aside from Robinson, the Marlins have no retired numbers. On the day in 1993 they came into existence, they retired No. 5 (his favorite player, DiMaggio) for Carl Barger, their first president, who’d died before the opener. But in 2012, when Logan Morrison requested the number, the Marlins un-retired it.

Seventeen retired numbers belong to managers, though four – the Angels’ Jim Fregosi, Mets’ Gil Hodges, Yankees’ Billy Martin, and Cardinals’ Red Schoendienst – also played for the teams that paid tribute to them.

Ryan’s No. 34 has been put out of service by the Astros, Angels, and Rangers. Aaron, Robinson, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson, Carlton Fisk, Rollie Fingers, and Greg Maddux were honored by two teams each.

Besides Meyer, the most obscure honoree might be Jimmie Reese, an Angels coach for 22 years. Don Zimmer, meanwhile, has a No. 66 (his years in baseball) hanging in Tampa Bay’s Tropicana Field. While he played and managed for decades, the Rays list him as a “senior adviser.”