Why do Melky Cabrera and Jose Abreu wear such large uniform numbers?

Look, just accept your loss (as with every other area of your life) and move on. This is not the place for you. Your witless comment contains no baseball-relevant information. Stop doing this to yourself.

Large uniform numbers are a sign of virility in some cultures.

Or perhaps not, but for those nitwits who persist in thinking that Jeter was a girly-man, when they link this thought with his wearing of a tiny, wimpy #2, they'll get a stupid chuckle from it.

The tradition that "lower numbers go to better players" is largely an American notion.

In the early days of numbering, many teams gave numbers 1-8 to the starting position players, backup position players got the next set and the pitchers would get the next set (which is why pitchers traditionally wear double-digit numbers).

Even in to the modern era, American players associated uniform number with relative worth within the franchise. With the major league rosters set at 40 players, numbers higher than 40 were often handed to fringe talents or minor-league prospects. I recall Don Drysdale once mentioning that he took being assigned #53 as a challenge and insult in his younger days.....and used that as motivation throughout his major league career.

As players like Drysdale reached success despite their "high" numbers, much of the stigma faded...but the tradition remained.

Many Asian and Latin leagues had no such stigma attached to uniform numbers....so they became much more "free form" and not locked into a convention dating back to the early 20th Century. I remember seeing a game in Japan where one player wore #109 and another wore #117.

Chimpmaker has proposed that players should wear their home addresses on the back of their unis. Chimp's would be Cage13