I don’t think thats quite a fair comparison. Both clubs may have developed (found) and equal amount of talent in the 30s and 40s, but the Cards business model in the required them to sell a fair bit of talent to break-even. Like I said had Mize, Medwick, Slaughter, Cooper… spent more of their careers in St Louis, I’m sure their numbers would be retired.

I’m not sure the criteria should be that radically different between the HoF and RN (Retired Number) except that the later only considers what the guy did as a memeber of a particular team.

Take this guy for instance: http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/manushe01.shtml.

Pretty amazing career: .330 hitter, 0.475 slg, 2500 hits over 17 seasons. But I doubt if he was ever in one place long enough for a team to consider retiring his number.

Thats just my opinion Pip. Like I said, I think a retired number is in ways a higher honor than the HoF.

And if you are willing I’d love to help investigate a predictive model for RNs.

I looked at the Yankees, since they probably have the most in both categories. Ten of their 16 retired numbers are HOFers (several of their HOFers played before the uniform-number era). Interesting.

Care to help me work on a formula for determining/predicting uniform-number retirement?

Pip:
I have always felt that for most teams having a uni number retired was an honor greater than even the HoF. Case in point, prior to the 1990s, I thought the Cards only retired 2 real numbers: Musial & Boyer. Certinly guys like Mize or Medwick would have made the cut if they spent their whole careers in the ‘Lou, but as it turns out they didn’t. Ditto for Mex. He was the finest NL first baseman of his generation and defensively he was the finest ever. He belongs in the Hall no matter if he wears a Cap from the Cards or the Muts. But that doesn’t mean we should retire #37.