Numerical logic drove Richard Petty to race with the famous 43 on his stock car.

"It was really just a progression from my dad's 42," Petty says.

Lee Petty had used 42 because "when he started racing, you raced your personal car," The King explains. The license plate on Lee Petty's car began with a 4 and ended with a 2.

The reasons athletes get attached to certain numbers are, well, numerous. They stick with what worked in high school. A role model wore the same number. It's a birthday or a house number or just a digit that sounded nice.

Michael Jordan looked up to his older brother, Larry, who was wearing 45 for Laney High in Wilmington, so the younger Jordan went with half of that -- 22 1/2 -- and rounded up.

Whatever the reasons, many players grow so comfortable -- and so identified -- with a number that they'd feel naked without it.

"I think mostly it's superstition," says Dr. Eric Morse, a sport psychiatrist and director of Carolina Performance, a private practice in Raleigh. "You're accustomed to a particular number, and you want to keep that number."

How much it matters varies among athletes. Retired outfielder Otis Nixon, a Columbus County native, switched baseball teams -- and numbers -- so often that he couldn't remember having worn 10 in 1997 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, his eighth of 10 stops in the major leagues. (As a leadoff hitter, he preferred No. 1.)

NFL running back Clinton Portis, on the other hand, got so attached to 26 that, after being traded from the Denver Broncos to Washington Redskins in 2004, he agreed to buy it from another player for $40,000. He wound up paying $38,000. The final $18,000 was awarded by a judge after the other player took Portis to court. (Portis had claimed that once the Redskins cut the player who had 26, the deal was nullified.)

Morse, who says he's been asked to help ease tension between two players over a uniform number, says the unwritten rule in the locker room favors the player who already has a certain number. If it is taken, "maybe you pick the reverse of the number," Morse says, "so if you were 13, you'd be 31. Or you'd pick one number away from that number, so you're 14 or 12."

If a number isn't taken, seniority usually rules, says Kirk Brown, the equipment manager for the N.C. State men's basketball team. Julius Hodge, who wanted to wear 24 as a freshman at NCSU in 2002, got it only after Trey Guidry decided to transfer to another school, Brown says.

Assuming a number is available, it might be forbidden anyway. The NFL restricts what its players can wear based on position. For example, 1 through 19 are reserved for quarterbacks, kickers and punters. Linemen and wide receivers must wear higher numbers. Defensive end Mario Williams switched from 9 to 90 when he went from N.C. State to the NFL.

In college basketball, the NCAA allows only the numbers that a game official can signal with a show of two hands, so 6 to 9, 16 to 19, 26 to 29, 36 to 39, 46 to 49 and 56 to 99 are out. That leaves 37 available numbers, including 0 and 00.

At Wake Forest, take away another 10 that are retired. Forward Jamie Skeen wanted 21, which was retired after Tim Duncan left, and instead settled for 31 -- the same number Eric Williams had worn because his mother once grabbed 31 rebounds in a game, says Craig Zakrzewski, the equipment manager for men's and women's basketball at Wake.

A team can have a 0 or a 00 but not both. Montross picked 00 at UNC because it was about as far as he could get from what he was used to wearing.

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