When he was 6 years old in 1976, Wade Stuckey's family moved from the Hoagland area to Fort Wayne's north side and he met Matt Mertes in the first grade at Harris Elementary.
“I was the new kid, and he was kind of nerdy and we played baseball together,” Stuckey said.
Like all best friends (best men in each other's weddings) who grew up playing sports, they'd often argue over the greatest athletic discussions of all time, and seven or so years ago they found their greatest topic: Who is the best athlete to ever wear each jersey number?
“My contributions were throwing out random numbers or leaving messages on his voice mail,” said Mertes, a government and economics teacher at North Side High School. “We would just sit around and bounce stuff off each other all the time.”
This discussion has evolved into the “Stuckey-Mertes Study of All-Time Numbers Ballot.” They listed up to seven athletes for each number from 0 to 99, including players from the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, auto racing and soccer, building from halls of fame, Internet research sites and their own memories.
The scary thing is that the survey numbers have exploded. Both men sent the list to almost every male on their e-mail lists, Facebook pages and most other friends they could think of. Stuckey, a local hockey organizer and official, started out hoping to get 500 respondents. Now he's pretty sure there will be at least 1,000 by the Aug. 16 deadline.
“I got seven responses in the first hour after I sent it out,” Stuckey said. “I'm getting responses from people I don't know, and that's what I love.”
There are some great arguments to be started with the list. No. 12 has Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, John Brodie, Tom Brady, Jim Kelly and John Stockton. Joe Montana, Whitey Ford, Len Dawson, Marcel Dionne, Bobby Clarke, Bob Lanier and Brett Hull are battling for No. 16. How about Dale Earnhardt, Babe Ruth, Harmon Killebrew, Allen Iverson, Jan Stenerud, Bronko Nagurski and Dwayne Wade at No. 3?
Maybe the strongest category is No. 33 where Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Patrick Roy compete, or No. 19 with Johnny Unitas, Steve Yzerman and Bob Feller.
Almost all of the lower numbers have seven candidates each, while most of the higher have between two and five. Richard Dent is the only No. 95, while 98, 94, 92, 89, 86, 58, 49 and 48 have two players each.
“There are a couple of the lower numbers where I thought we could have added even more because there are a boatload of baseball players who wore single-digit numbers,” Mertes said. “I think we're going to find out how much sports history people know.”
The one Easter egg they threw in was former NHL player Fred Knipscheer at No. 47. Knipscheer grew up with and graduated with Stuckey and Mertes from Snider in 1988 and played 28 games with the Boston Bruins. He's taking on Mel Blount, Jack Morris, Tom Glavine and Scott Young.
“Part of the fun is going to be seeing who we missed,” Stuckey said. “You can pick on us. The best thing about it is you have a referee and a teacher so we're used to that.”
One they missed was racer David Pearson at No. 21. Stuckey admits he's not much of a racing fan, but he gave an initial list to the biggest racing fans he knows, his uncles and cousins, and they crashed into the wall on that one.
Mertes and Stuckey started distributing the list June 10 and tabulations will start July 30 with an Aug. 16 deadline. Results can be e-mailed to bapuckd@verizon. net, time00life@yahoo.com or mattmertes@aol.com, or mailed to Mertes at 230 Edgeknoll Lane, Fort Wayne, IN 46816 or Stuckey at 3901 Abbott St., Fort Wayne, IN 46806. Write-in votes are not encouraged, but will be accepted.
