Retired Number
Retiring the number of an athlete is an honor a team bestows on a player, usually after the player has left the team or retires from the game. Once a number is retired, no future player from the team may use that number, unless the player so-honored permits it. Such an honor may also be bestowed on players who had highly memorable careers, have died prematurely under tragic circumstances, or have had their promising careers ended by serious injury. Some sports that retire team numbers include baseball, ice hockey, basketball, American football and association football. Retired jerseys are often referred to as "hanging from the rafters" as they are, literally, put to hang above the team's home arena.
The first number officially retired by a team in a professional sport was that of hockey player Lionel Hitchman, whose number 3 was retired by the Boston Bruins in 1934.
Read more about Retired Number: Details and Examples, League-wide Retirements, Auto Racing, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words retired and/or number:
“Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children’s hands, in front-yard plots,—now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;Mthe last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)