They're a way players identify themselves.
How else could Phillies team travel and clubhouse services director Frank Coppenbarger pull a beautiful prank on his friend John Vukovich in 1993?
"We had a little fun with Vuke," Coppenbarger said recently. "Everyone had a little fun with Vuke."
Tyler Green was in camp that spring as a rookie. He wore No. 28 at Wichita State, but Mitch Williams opened spring training with that number. So Coppenbarger, manager Jim Fregosi and general manager Lee Thomas plotted a relatively innocent joke to make Vukovich's blood boil.
"It's amazing how you try to make your friends mad," Coppenbarger said with a laugh. "You're supposed to try to get along with your friends, but everybody that knew Vuke understood why we would do this."
Coppenbarger called Vukovich into his office at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, Fla. He told Vukovich, who wore No. 18, they would have to change his number.
"Why?" Vukovich growled.
"Tyler's going to make the club and his agent asked for 28 because he had it in college," Coppenbarger said. "But we can't give him that number because Mitch has it. So he settled on 18. I'm sorry. I'm as upset as you are. I already had all the shirts made and now I've got to redo them."
It's unclear whether steam came from Vukovich's ears at this point. Vukovich, who had been in baseball forever, had just been told he had to surrender his number.
To a rookie.
He was upset.
"That's putting it real mildly," Coppenbarger said. "Tyler Green knew nothing about this, by the way. He still might not know it."
Vukovich kept checking to see if Coppenbarger was messing with him, but Coppenbarger kept a straight face.
Vukovich eventually selected another number and walked out, kicking trash cans and dropping curse words on his way back to the coach's room. Fregosi waited for Vukovich on the other end.
He said he had heard the entire conversation through the thin walls.
