This is one part in our series looking at the best players to wear (almost) every number in MLS history. To read the other stories, click here.



The insides of a felled tree can tell you a lot. Counting the rings, for example, can show you how long the tree lived.



But it goes beyond just that — the appearance of the rings themselves can be revelatory, harboring information not just about the plant itself but about the conditions of the world around it. When consecutive marks are far apart, that means it was a good year to be a tree: good soil and plenty of sunlight, allowing it to build up mass. The opposite is true, too: when they’re close together, something bad has happened.



Researchers in the Pacific Northwest, for example, were able to back-date a massive earthquake to the year 1699. By studying the stumps of long-dead red cedar trees from out on the Washington coast, they were able to pinpoint when they stopped growing, hinting at some...