The Tribune-Review sports staff is conducting a daily countdown of the best players in Pittsburgh pro and college sports history to wear each jersey number.

No. 87: Sidney Crosby

The reason he wears these digits define the Penguins captain in many ways.

He is obsessive.

Born Aug. 7, 1987, Crosby is so fixated on those figures, he even had the 12-year contract he signed in 2012 crafted to create a salary cap hit of $8.7 million.

Of course, his obsessions go beyond arithmetic.

All those little routines and habits he has — such as stick-handling over a fast-food logo painted into the ice or walking into the rink in a certain fashion or wearing a sweat-stained hat for all interviews — are the byproduct of a bundle of tightly wound neurons and synapses that form Sidney Crosby and his obsession of being the best hockey player on Earth.

Nearly a decade-and-a-half into his nonpareil career, there is little to suggest Crosby is ready to relinquish that title.

Arriving in the late summer of 2005 thanks to the Penguins being on the right side of a lottery drawing, Crosby has lived up to nearly every one of the immense expectations foisted upon him before he could even grow a beard, which is one of the relatively few endeavors he still struggles with.

Having led the franchise to three Stanley Cup titles, Crosby also has an assortment of individual awards including Hart Memorial and Conn Smythe trophies.

At 32, he has added a defensive component to his game which has made him, in the words of coach Mike Sullivan, “the best 200-foot player in the game.”

And its most obsessive.

• Crosby’s excellence shouldn’t overshadow the exploits of a Hall of Famer who also wore No. 87. Rickey Jackson was “the other end” opposite of the dominant Hugh Green for some great Pitt football defensive lines in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

A second-round pick of the New Orleans Saints in 1981, Jackson enjoyed a 15-year career which led to his 2010 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

• If you want to wear No. 87 for the Steelers, you better be a good blocker. Tight end Mark Bruener was a first-round pick in 1995 and became arguably the NFL’s best blocking tight end throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A member of the Steelers’ Super Bowl XXX team, Bruener aided star running back Jerome Bettis in becoming a perennial 1,000-yard rusher.

• Larry Brown was so good as a blocking tight end, he was converted into an offensive lineman seven years into his career.

A fifth-round pick in 1971, Brown switched positions (and jersey numbers), becoming a right tackle (and No. 79) in 1977. A member of all four of the Steelers’ Super Bowl teams in the 1970s, Brown was also selected to a Pro Bowl in 1982.

Check out the entire ‘Burgh’s Best to Wear It series here.

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