Ever since Masayuki Kakefu was elected to the Hall Of Fame last month, I've been wondering if the Tigers would retire his uniform number. The Tigers currently have retired three uniform numbers - 10 for Fumio Fujimura, 23 for Yoshio Yoshida and 11 for Minoru Murayama - and I've always been kind of surprised they hadn't retired 31 for Kakefu. Of course, I was also surprised that Kakefu wasn't already in the Hall Of Fame so maybe I'm just not paying attention enough. Checking out
the "uniform number history" website,
I see that five players have worn Kakefu's 31 since he retired after the 1988 season with Jefry Marte being the most recent from 2019-22 (not counting Kakefu when he was farm team manager in 2016-17) so the Tigers haven't really been reserving the number in any way. I took a quick look at
the Tigers' website but I didn't see any announcements about them retiring the number (or even the Hall Of Fame vote). So I guess we'll see. With
the recent passing of Yoshida, there's no living player with his number retired by Hanshin. Kakefu would also be the first retired number for a Tigers player without an alliterative name.
Here are cards for the three retired numbers along with Kakefu's card from the 2013 BBM Great Numbers set:
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| 2001 BBM #535 |
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| 2013 BBM Great Numbers #139 |
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| 2001 BBM #536 |
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| 2013 BBM Great Numbers #103 |
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