From a few weeks back but still a good read…
Not retiring a number doesn’t mean you hand it over to the latest wide-eyed arrival from Las Vegas. No Met has worn 31 since Piazza left town, and that’s as it should be. The Mets have kept 24 mostly mothballed since Willie Mays’s cameo, handing it out only to Rickey Henderson and, um, Kelvin Torve. But without speaking ill of Dave Gallagher, David Newhan or Tito Navarro, no Met should have worn 8 or 17 or 36 since their examplars left town either.
With you 100% on this Shannon.
I have never understood the Mets’ reluctance to retire numbers.
The Brewers retired 44 for Hank. How is that situation different than the Mets retiring 24 for Willie; other than the fact that if they were going to, they should have done it 40 years ago?!
Given the practices of other teams, at the very least 24, 31, 8, 36 and 17 should be retired. 18 and 45 could go up there too.
If 18 goes up, I don’t see how you can leave 16 off. 8, 16, 17 and 18 should all go up together. That was the greatest Mets team ever. My question though, is if 31 and 45 are retired for Piazza and McGraw repectively, does that mean John Franco will also have his number retired, since he wore both 31 AND 45?