Towers Laughs at Social-Norms

Toronto Blue Jay Josh Towers is a revolutionary as it is clearly illustrated in the picture to the left. See, Towers is a pitcher and wears the number 7. In the baseball world this is the equivalent of a shortstop wearing the number 103. Pitchers can't wear a number below 15, let alone a single digit number.

You might argue that pitchers can wear lower numbers, in fact some very good players did. Babe Ruth wore number 3 and he was the a heckuva pitcher before he was the greatest slugger of all-time. That was back in the day and uniform numbers had just been invented. It was acceptable at the time but the equipment managers would soon come to their senses.

Roger Clemens wore 12 when he joined the Yankees in free agency the first time in 1999. We can only assume that Steinbrenner flipped his sh!@ when he realized what was going on and wouldn't allow his organization to give out the number anymore to a pitcher. Clemens now wears 22 for the Yankees.

We hope this will not be the start of a trend in baseball. The sport has a number of problems already including steroids, lack of interest in the game and soaring salaries. Baseball doesn't need controversial numbers becoming a hot button issue as well. But we do wish good luck to Josh Towers and his quest to give single digit numbers worn by pitchers viability in the eyes of players, owners and fans. We will continue to follow Towers and his numerical mission.