Rapids History By The Numbers: Overview

Ok, I've been finally inspired to write about something Rapids related even with the pandemic shutting down the league.  This is the first in a series discussing which is the best Rapid to wear each number all-time.

The goal of this series is to focus on their play as a member of the team.  If the focus was just the best player overall then clearly Tim Howard would be the best player to ever wear #1 and El Pibe would be the best #10.  Were they the best player to wear their numbers when playing for the burgundy boys though?  A lot of the criteria is subjective, obviously.  While I won't be looking at their careers outside the team any National Team appearances while wearing the green/blue/burgundy will have an influence, since National Team callups are based on their club play.

Now there have been 47 numbers used over Rapids history.  I've had to piece the number history together from John Persing's original archive, Wikipedia, game reports, Rapids statistics, random game photos found online, and some help from Richard Fleming.  So don't be shocked if the data isn't 100% correct.  Also, I'm not writing 47 different columns.  Some of the numbers were used by one or two players total, so I can combine those into one column.  Others are very obvious as to who the best player was (Balboa/17, Mastroeni/25) so we won't need to spend a lot of space on them.  I'm hoping to keep this to about 30 total, and to get through them in a month or two.

#1 will be posted later tonight, and I'm hoping to get at least #2 and #3 out this week.