Today, the Oakland Athletics are retiring Rickey Henderson’s number. You might be saying to yourself, “The A’s never retired Henderson’s number?” We did. His stolen base record will never be broken. Or his record for saying “Rickey” in a sentence. And that got us thinking. What other great players are out there who were never honored by their team or any other team? Taking steroids out of the equation and everything. And we came up with this list. Here are The 10 Best Baseball Players Without Retired Numbers.
10. Kid Nichols
You’ve probably never heard of this guy. And that’s fine. He retired in 1906. That’s before teams even had numbers. Seriously. The first team to permanently have numbers was the Yankees in 1929 and it wasn’t even required until 1937. But there are plenty of guys (Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Rogers Hornsby) who didn’t have numbers who were honored by their teams.
Kid Nichols won 361 games. Only problems is that he spent a majority of his career with the Boston Beaneaters. They’re known as the Atlanta Braves now and it might be weird to honor a guy in Atlanta who never played there. He might not have ever visited Atlanta. Sure, he had 6 more wins than Greg Maddux. But it wouldn’t make sense to honor a guy who’s been dead since the Fifties.
9. Tim Keefe
Not all of these guys are going to be ancient, we promise. This guy looks especially ancient, considering his baseball card is for Gypsy Queen Cigarettes. He’s so old that he used to pitch from 45 feet. And he spent most of his career pitching from 50 feet. It wasn’t until 1893 that pitchers had to throw from 60 feet 6 inches. But we mentioned earlier that his rookie ERA of 0.86 will never be broken, regardless of how close he was standing.
Keefe won 342 games, which is 10th all-time. His problem (besides being an old timey player with no number) is that he played for several teams, including a bunch of defunct teams like the Troy Trojans and others in the American Association and Players League. The San Francisco Giants could technically honor him, but it’d be a lot of people in the stands scratching their heads or yelling, “Who gives a sh*t?”
8. Eddie Collins
How has nobody retired Eddie Collins’ number? He played 13 years with the Philadelphia Athletics, where he was an MVP in 1914 and won 3 World Series. And he played another 12 years with the White Sox, where he won another World Series. He was even on the 1919 Black Sox, but didn’t throw games. Oh, and he has 3,315 hits and a career batting average of .333. What does the guy have to do?
What’s hurting Collins is that the A’s really only have retired numbers from Oakland players (post 1968). But the White Sox have no excuse. Put him on the boooooaaard, yesssss! 
7. Eddie Plank
Plank is another guy screwed by Oakland’s non-Oakland Athletics policy. He won 326 games and played 14 seasons for the A’s in Philadelphia. He also won 2 World Series with them. Why do the A’s hate their past?
We’re gathering an argument for Oakland to quit being ridiculous. And it doesn’t hurt that the next player is…
6. Jimmie Foxx
3 MVP Awards, a Triple Crown, 534 home runs, 2 World Series rings. He also played 7 years for the Red Sox, but they had some stupid rule about having to play 10 years with the club to have a number retired. The Oakland management should have to hug players like Foxx, Plank and Collins (as well as Frank Baker, Chief Bender, Michey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, Connie Mack, Al Simmons and Rube Waddell) like the scene in Good Will Hunting with Robin Williams and Matt Damen and repeat, “It’s not your fault we moved out of Philadelphia.”
5. Roger Clemens
We said we weren’t taking steroid allegations into consideration. But Clemens has 354 wins and SEVEN Cy Young Awards. SEVEN. Maybe the Red Sox feel betrayed that after 13 seasons in Boston, he’d go on to play for the Yankees. That could be why they haven’t retired Wade Boggs number either. Even though the f*cking Rays did. We all know that the Yankees are evil, so they should just rub it in Boston’s face by celebrating Clemens, roids and all. Or would that be terrible for baseball?
4. Tris Speaker
The Indians retired The Fans number in 2001, but not a guy with 3,514 hits, a .345 career average and 3 World Series rings. The Fans! Way to patronize a fan base with nothing to cheer for. Speaker also played 9 seasons in Boston (their stupid 10-year rule), but he was on the Indians when they were still relevant. He was Cleveland’s LeBron James before that whole Jackie Robinson thing came in to play. Cleveland doesn’t rock for never honoring one of the all-time greats.
3. Barry Bonds
Yeah. Barry Bonds. We said it. Do you really think the Giants fans would be pissed? They’re the only people who wouldn’t be pissed. Give him #25, but then put an asterisk next to it. The Giants removed all of their Bonds tributes around AT&T Park, so we don’t really see this happening in the near future.
2. Walter Johnson
The Big Train played all of his seasons and got all of his 417 wins, 110 shutouts and 3,509 strikeouts with the Washington Senators. Washington is now in its third attempt to keep a team in their city and Johnson’s Senators are now the Minnesota Twins. And it might not be good to honor Johnson in D.C. because nobody wants to be reminded of constant failures. Even though most of the fans would say, “Wait. We had baseball prior to 2005?” And it’s not like they’re honoring the Expos’ former players at Nationals Park. It’s a big mess. D.C. is like the Bermuda Triangle of baseball. They have a statue out front, but that’s all he’ll get.
1. Cy Young
Cy Young is the top guy on our list. Technically, all of baseball honors the guy with an award named in his honor, but no individual teams? He also falls under Boston’s old 10-year-rule (that they actually broke in 2008 with Johnny Pesky). And the team he played the most seasons with was the Cleveland Spiders, a National League team was basically kicked out of the bigs after 1899. Young eventually played for the Indians (and 12 years total in Cleveland), so the Indians could technically honor him if they weren’t too busy honoring The Fans.
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