{"id":409844,"date":"2026-01-16T01:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T01:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409844\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T01:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T01:01:11","slug":"sf-giants-to-retire-incoming-hall-of-famer-jeff-kents-jersey-no-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/409844\/","title":{"rendered":"SF Giants to retire incoming Hall of Famer Jeff Kent’s jersey No. 21"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month after Jeff Kent was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame<\/a>, the Giants announced on Thursday afternoon that they will retire Kent\u2019s jersey No. 21 on Aug. 29 after he is inducted into Cooperstown in July.<\/p>\n

Kent will become the 14th person in franchise history to have his jersey number retired, joining Bill Terry (3), Mel Ott (4), Carl Hubbell (11), Monte Irvin (20), Will Clark (22), Willie Mays (24), Barry Bonds (25), Juan Marichal (27), Orlando Cepeda (30), Gaylord Perry (36), Willie McCovey (44), Chrsty Mathewson (no number) and John McGraw (no number).<\/p>\n

San Francisco officially retires someone\u2019s number when he reaches the Hall of Fame, the only two exceptions being Bonds in 2018<\/a> and Clark in 2022<\/a>. The first 21,000 fans to arrive at Oracle Park will receive a National Baseball Hall of Fame replica ring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m stuttering here because it has not sunk in,\u201d Kent said last month upon being elected. \u201cI didn\u2019t think about it much. During the 10 years of opportunity to get voted in, it\u2019d come up every year and the moments seemed to pass by. Not utter disappointment, but just disappointment \u2014 frustration that I wasn\u2019t better recognized. \u2026 The time had gone by that you leave it alone, and I left it alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the game. Everything I gave to the game, I left there on the field. This moment, today \u2026 absolutely unprepared. Emotionally unstable. My thoughts are so far clouded. \u2026 They\u2019re just jumbled so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kent joined the Giants in November 1996 (along with Jos\u00e9 Vizcaino) from Cleveland for third baseman Matt Williams, an incredibly unpopular trade that led former general manager Brian Sabean to defend himself by saying, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not an idiot.\u201d At that point, Williams was an established franchise cornerstone while Kent was merely a solid player who had spent time with the Toronto Blue Jays, New York Mets and Cleveland.<\/p>\n

In time, Kent proved himself to be another foundational piece. Kent hit .297 with 175 home runs and 689 RBIs over six seasons with San Francisco, winning 2000 NL MVP with three All-Star selections and three Silver Sluggers. Kent helped lead the Giants to the World Series in 2002, hitting two home runs in Game 5 as San Francisco ultimately fell to the Anahem Angels in seven games.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the turning point of my career,\u201d Kent said in December of joining the Giants. \u201cWhen I got to San Francisco, (manager) Dusty Baker lit a fire under me to be better \u2014 not to achieve the normal standard but to achieve more. Dusty was a guy that really understood how to get the best out of his players and I think he knew I had more to give.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, Kent hit 351 of his 377 career home runs as a second baseman, the most in major-league history. Kent amassed 1,518 RBIs, 2,461 hits, four Silver Sluggers and five All-Star appearances.<\/p>\n

If Kent goes into the Hall of Fame as a Giant as expected, he would become the sixth player since the team moved to San Francisco to represent the orange and black in Cooperstown, joining Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Perry and Cepeda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A month after Jeff Kent was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Giants announced on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2356,363,2329,99],"class_list":["post-409844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-california","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}