9 downing street?

i was a little annoyed a few years ago when "batting stance guy" was being feted around the internet. there was no youtube when i was growing up, but me and my friends (and i am sure pretty much every other baseball playing kid of the day) were mimicing the batter's box routines of steve garvey, willie stargell, joe morgan, rod carew and other players with distinctive stances.  that guy wasn't unique, he just succeeded at marketing himself at a time when certain media outlets were looking for content, i guess.

growing up in southern california, there was another player whose stance we copied, and that was the angels' brian downing.  downing had a very open stance, and would pull his front foot back in line as part of his prep as the pitch was being delivered. it was quite different.  

i was drawn to his 1981 topps card

because it shows his open stance although not from the best angle.  the other thing that struck me about this card was the number 9 on his back.

i am a numbers guy. i was a numbers kid. i studied stats and jersey numbers exhaustively back then, and to me, downing was number 5.  he took that number when he joined the angels in 1978 and wore it until he left the team as a free agent following the 1990 season.  however, there was a brief period of time when he wore number 9 during the 1980 season.  downing, wearing his number 5, fractured his ankle during a game in april that year, and was out until september. during his absence, teammate carney lansford had taken to wearing number 5 (i assume with downing's blessing) and so downing wore number 9 for the final month of the season when he returned from the disabled list.

in 1981, it was back to number 5 for downing as lansford was dealt to the red sox in the offseason. downing's name came to mind a couple months ago when mike trout was busy becoming the angels' franchise leader in home runs, as downing had once topped that list. he was actually atop a number of offensive leaderboards for the halos until garrett anderson and tim salmon came along.  to me, he's still high on my list of number 5's, along with brooks robinson, george brett, johnny bench, jim lefebvre, and johnny oates. and corey seager, of course.