Mystery of 23

Why did David Beckham choose No. 23 for his jersey when he made the multimillion-euro move to Real Madrid? Because better-half Victoria poshly said something like: "Well, Michael Jordan didn’t do too bad with that number."

The iconic football bender had been a Jaworski in England, sporting No. 7. But he needed a new goal bar code for his stint as a virtual Madrileño. You know, to join that team made up of too many megabuck stars, some of them had to warm the bench.

There Mr. Beckham joined the likes of Brazil’s Ronaldo, France’s Zizou and Portugal’s Figo, among other eminent legends, scintillating greats all. Unlike in the NBA, no salary cap restrictions come into play in the Spanish league.

Thus did David have to consult with the spicy half as to his commercial reincarnation. And they settled on No. 23, the way the basketball rookie yet trying to be like Mike did, way back in 1984, when he couldn’t appropriate No. 45. As yet. Years later, after retirement and return, MJ would wear No. 45 as a Wizard, as a tribute to his older bro. But only temporarily. Back to Mr. 23 it was once David Stern & Co. put their honcho feet down and said: "Well, what’ll it be?"

When Mr. 23 retired for the umpteenth time, a young kid hailed as The Chosen One took the same number for the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James has worn No. 23 for three years now, and it’s very likely that, like Jordan, he’ll win a championship for his team and further posterize the number.

Okay, wait. What is it about No. 23 that attracts such luminaries as Jordan, Beckham and James – Bond, er, James, LeBron James?

I consulted my favorite numerologist down South. Dr. Sawi the Centenarian. And this he quickly had to say: "The 23rd letter in the English (like David B.) alphabet is W. It means Winner.

"When you reach 23, you have one hour left if it’s hours that matter, one week if it’s days. This can mean that when you get to the 23rd, one is the one!"

Cryptic, that one, or all of that is. But he had more in store; my cell phone just kept on buzzing to the nines with the Doc’s serial texting.

"No single digit can stand up to 1; 1 is The One. So what the other digits do is double-team it. That’s the genesis of the magic combination 23. No other pair of digits can stand up to it.

"The question is: Can 23 number 1’s stand up to one number 23? The answer is yes – except in basketball. In basketball you can survive all odds, except 23."

Hmm. The guy’s a genius. But he’s too hoops-crazy. Why, he’s a Pinoy genius. Which doesn’t quite matter in this global day and age, unless you invent the yoyo or the moon buggy.

Doc Savant quickly shows, however, that he’s no one-trick pony. Not just a one-note samba issues from his sportive proclivities. He has more mystifying cryptography to offer.

"In chess, there are 32 chessmen. But chess is a code game. The hidden meaning is 23!

"Who would think of reversing 32? What for? The message is that you must go beyond logic, beyond 64 squares. You must look for the 65th square. By reversing, you get to the magical, the ODD."

I try to approximate this apparently coruscating brilliance, without letting on that I’m actually mystified beyond sixes and sevens, and am beginning to wonder if the Doc’s Egyptian. Or maybe, like Fermat of the last theorem, as French as a Pierre. I try to curl in a counter-kick that seems very Algerian. "Fabuleux. Trés bien. Penultimate to a couple of dozen. And when you triple it, soixante-neuf!"

And before his hand’s largest digit could work further wonders on a Nokia keypad, I follow up only too swiftly:

"Also, 23 happens to be the seventh prime number, after 3, 7, 11, 13, 17 and 19. The Beckhams must’ve known somet-hing. Maybe they were allowed to feel up the megaliths of Stonehenge at midnight of the solstice."

Somehow I felt I had offended my cell phone correspondent with that bit of New Age speculation. He didn’t react, reply, resurrect for a time, so that I was left alone to imagine the repartee we would have had, à la Borges, had he kept his part of the don’t-cry-Argentine bargain.

"Aye! 23! The two other corners of the trinity. Hup, two, three! Coeval parts of the haiku. Rising notes in the bugled ‘Taps,’ after the first tentative one. The ‘LI —TA’ in Nabokov’s ‘Lo-li-ta.’

"Are our organs the uno, and our legs dos y tres?"

Polyglot as I sounded, Pollyanna-ish in outlook, and of the Polly-wants-a-cracker sort in terms of mimetic cleverness (O cunning linguist!), still did I fail to draw a response. Until I was truly left alone to ponder on the vagaries of sacred numbers.

I wanted to tell Doc Sawi: Do you know that there are 23 players in a football team, thus the number 23 is often used by the second alternate goalie? Some exceptions, as when Beckham chose 23, upon the prodding of Queen Victoria, er, Posh Spice. Jose Manuel Reina of Spain, Maarten Stekelenberg of Holland, Gregory Coupet of France, Timo Hildebrand of Germany, Oscar Ustari of Argentina, Rami Shaaban of Sweden, and Bohdan Shust of Ukraine are all second- or third-string goalkeepers who joined their national teams for World Cup 2006, but didn’t see action. They had No. 23 on their backs. Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi, also with No. 23 but as Japan’s primary goalie, was an exception.

Very active non-goalies who wore No. 23 were Won Hee Chon of Korea, Luiz Perez of Mexico, Philip Degen of Sweden, Assimiou Toure of Togo, Helder Postiga of Portugal, Eddie Pope of the U.S., Marco Bresciano of Australia, Christian Benitez of Ecuador, and the young, exciting Robinho, touted as the future of the Brazilian game.

Oh, there’s one more significant player who wore No. 23: Marco Materazzi of Italy. The Matrix. Who got into Zinedine Zidane’s head. So that the fabled No. 10 head-butted No. 23 right on the chest, on his very last game as an internationalist. What a way to go. Or do we say: Way to go, Zizou!

In Paris in 1900, a mathematician named Hilbert gave an address before the International Congress of Mathematicians. Outlining 23 major mathematical problems to be studied in the coming century, it is said to have been the most influential speech ever given about mathematics.

In 1974, a symposium at Northern Illinois University discussed the developments arising from Hilbert’s 23 problems, how progress has since been made on each, and how such work has influenced mathematics. The symposium saw 23 new problems of importance described.

Back in Paris, it has been reported that only last April, scholars discovered 23 blank pages that they say may have been a lost Samuel Beckett play, this just weeks after the birth centenary of the pioneering minimalist playwright. Archivists analyzing papers from his Paris estate uncovered a small stack of blank paper that scholars are now calling "the latest example of the late Irish-born writer’s genius." They also theorize that the 23-page play might have been intended to be titled "Five Conversations," "Entropolis," or "Stop."

Can the irony be lost on us? The way Zizou lost, and used, his head? What is it about No. 23 that parlays athletic, mathematical, and minimalist ability into greatness?

Lastly, for now anyway, or until archivists discover another stunning item of reality, the Internet also tells us that "23 is the easiest way to organize, print and share your digital photos, and... 23 doesn’t even show any annoying ads and logos!" It’s an uploading system, for e-mailing photos with but a few clicks. 23. Two and three. Why, these are the numbers panini-ed between 1 and 4. Or 14. On the 14th of July we attend the Bastille Day bash, except how can you now call it a bash, or even a party, with all those long faces?

Ah, misery. Excuse me for butting in like this. But only the great goat Zizou may have it in his head: the answer to Materazzi the Matrix’s conundrum of trash talk. Allez, allez, o mathematical mystery.