The New York Yankees have retired more numbers than any team in baseball. Here is my personal ranking of the retired numbers of the Yankees:

1)      Babe Ruth, #3

2)      Joe DiMaggio, #5

3)      Lou Gehrig, #4

4)      Mickey Mantle, #7

5)      Derek Jeter, #2

6)      Whitey Ford, #16

7)      Yogi Berra, #8

8)      Bernie Williams, #51

9)      Bill Dickey, #8

10)   Phil Rizzuto, #10

11)   Andy Pettitte, #46

12)   Thurman Munson, #15

13)   Ron Guidry, #49

14)   Jorge Posada, #20

15)   Don Mattingly, #23

16)   Paul O'Neill, #21

17)   Elston Howard, #32

18)   Mariano Rivera, #42

19)   Casey Stengel, #37

20)   Joe Torre, #6

21)   Roger Maris, #9

22)   Reggie Jackson, #44

23)   Billy Martin, #1

Most of what we see in this list would make perfect sense to most people, and the top seven are clearly household names, but there are a few things that require some explanation. I treated managers, and even relief pitchers, different than the standard players who have been honored. I didn’t feel like putting managers higher than players who spent all or most of their careers with the Yankees – or relief pitchers, but I do put them above managers. So while nobody would question that Rivera is a hall of fame relief pitcher or that Stengel is a hall of fame manager, I have them lower than several players who have questionable hall of fame candidacies.

The two other rankings that I’d like to explain are Maris and Jackson. Both are ranked lower simply because they had short careers (less than 1,000 games) in New York, and didn’t play their entire careers there. If Jackson had played his entire career with the Yankees, he would be ranked up around Jeter and Berra. If Maris played every season of his career with the Yankees, he would move up to the Pettitte and Munson area of the list. The two aren’t perfect selections for that reason.