I was checking the ESPN website on my phone a few mornings ago and saw the headline and video preview image shown above. I didn’t know who “Berry” was, but I could tell he was a base coach, not a player, because he was wearing a Cool-Flo helmet. “Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “interesting to see a coach wearing No. 0.”
Then I scrolled down to the next story, where I saw this:
Whoa — what are the odds that the top two stories on ESPN’s MLB page at any given moment would show one base coach wearing No. 0 and another one wearing No. 99? (For the record, that’s Quintin Berry of the Cubs and Willie Harris of the Reds, both of whom coach third base.)
That got me thinking about coaches’ uni numbers. Of course, many pitching coaches, bench coaches, and other MLB coaching personnel now wear windbreakers or hoodies (just like their managers), so their roster numbers are essentially moot. But base coaches still wear jerseys, so their numbers remain visible. Are there other base coaches who wear 0 or 99? Are there coaches who are assigned those numbers but we’d never know because they don’t wear jerseys?
I was curious, so I looked up the “Coaching Staff” page for every team on MLB.com. I found some interesting stuff, including the following: