The magical number 9

Wednesday, February 11 2009 @ 12:43 PM EST

Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Industrial output ... Financial imbalance
Thrusting it between his shoulder blades

• from Revolution Number Nine by the Beatles

Ted Williams. Reggie Jackson. Minnie Minoso. Enos Slaughter. Bill Mazeroski. Roger Maris. What do these men all have in common? (No, this isn't a trivia thread, sorry.) Simply -- they are the only men in baseball history to have had the uniform #9 retired by a big league ballclub.

Now, "9" is a magic number in baseball. Nine innings in a game. Nine players on the field defensively -- and nine in the lineup, pre-DH. You get the idea. So in a reverse twist on Dan McIlroy's excellent "Lobby of Numbers" series, let's see what kind of roster we can build strictly of players who wore the uniform #9. (I'm going to need some help here!) ...

First, let's slot the guys already mentioned.

• While primarily an outfielder, Minoso played more than a couple of hundred big league games at the hot corner, and a handful at first and short, so he's our super-utility guy. We have a pretty darn good third baseman who flashed some leather in the Bronx once upon a time, anyway ...
• We don't have an obvious center fielder, but again, Maris played there more than a couple of hundred times in the bigs, so he's our guy.
• Teddy Ballgame is in left field -- any questions?
• Slaughter, by all accounts a pretty good leatherman, plays RF which puts Reggie, by all accounts NOT much with the glove, in the designated hitter role.
• You want glovework? Mazeroski is at least arguably the greatest fielding 2B of all time, so look there; he also apparently had, at least once, a penchant for the clutch home run.

So, to start off with (pun intended) how do we fill out ...

The Starting Nine
** Hall of Famer
* All-Star

Manager: Suggestions?

Lineup
(Yes, there's a DH. Deal with it!)
C
1B
2B Bill Mazeroski**
SS
3B Graig Nettles*
LF Ted Williams**
CF Roger Maris*
RF Enos Slaughter**
DH Reggie Jackson**

Bench
Minnie Minoso*
Bill Plummer?
Brady Anderson*?

Rotation
Suggestions?

Bullpen
Suggestions?

Who else qualifies? After Nettles, off the top of my head, I can only positively think of Plummer, a backup catcher with the Big Red Machine, and Anderson, another outfielder -- though granted, another 50-homer guy to go with Maris. Both are, at best, bench fodder (or in Plummer's case, Bench fodder. Har!) ... who else plays here? And how do we find candidates?

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