Judge’s 61st Sets Off Yankee #9 & 61 Numerology Explosion

September 29, 2022 paperbacklou Analysis 0

Aaron Judge hit his 61st homerun of the season last night, tying Roger Maris‘s American League record and touching off a Yankee Numerology Explosion:

  • It has been 61 years since Roger Maris hit 61 homers in 1961.
  • Maris wore #9 — since retired in his honor. Being a retired number, it cannot be worn by another Yankee. Aaron Judge wears #99. The Yankee Twitter channel brought this up:

  • Before the #9 was retired, it was worn famously by Graig Nettles — who won a homer title in 1976 and STILL holds the American League record for all-time homeruns by a 3rd baseman. (And should be in the Hall of Fame, as well as having at least a plaque in Monument Park.)
  • According to this page — https://www.yankeenumbers.com/playerslist.asp?x_Number=9&z_Number== — #9 has been worn by Yankees in 61 different seasons. And since it is a retired number, it will always have been worn by Yankees in exactly 61 different seasons.
  • As Brian pointed out on Twitter, Michael Kay made the call on tv, and he is 61 years old (born Feb 2, 1961).
  • The Beatles Revolution 9 famously has a voice that sounds like Bob Sheppard announcing Roger Maris coming to the plate, “#9, #9, #9”. However — according to an article in Far Out magazine, Lennon was quoted in 1970 as saying, “I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, ‘This is EMI test series number nine’.”

“I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn’t realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying, ‘number nine’; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was.”

The article in Far Out Magazine drills down on John Lennon’s obsession with the #9, as he was born on October 9th (the 9th month of the year) and first lived on 9 Newcastle Road.

 

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