The Fab 10

Ask and ye shall receive, Brian Cook.
Is our protection money up-to-date now?

On some baseball message boards I read, there are a few people who have suggested, semi-facetiously, that it's hard to see Alan Trammell making it into the Hall of Fame if Lou Whitaker isn't going to be there standing beside him at the podium. There are some players that just go together and it seems wrong to honor one without honoring the other. Tram & Sweet Lou. Isiah & Dumars. Martin & Van Bergen. And now, Novak & Douglass.

The Binary Duo doesn't have the stats of Cazzie Russell, Rudy T., and the rest of the honored five, so there probably won't be a day when we see 0 and 1 hanging from the Crisler Center rafters. They are the players opposing teams love to hate because their contributions aren't measured by points, rebounds, and assists as much as they are measured by milliecksteins, the official Système Internationale unit of grittiness and stick-to-it-iveness.

The standard honors aren't right for a pair of players so closely intertwined and defined by their intangibles. (While I will miss their senior intangibles, I'm also looking forward to the new incoming freshman class's tangibles.) There will probably be a day when they are inducted together into the Hall of Honor, but I propose a higher honor for the pair that brought Michigan basketball back to prominence.

Just as the #1 jersey is reserved for a wide receiver who earns it, the #10 jersey (1 and 0) should be reserved for a player who shows extraordinary commitment and leadership within the basketball program. Let's start a new tradition so that future generations can remember the outsized contributions of #1 and #0, and let's forge a link to future Michigan Wolverine greats by having them earn #10 in honor of Zack and Stu.