They’ve had our number for a while

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: “They’re the better team – they’ve had our number for a while.”

My comments:

Here, the speaker admits that the other team is the superior one as it has beaten the speaker’s team time and again – for some considerable time.

Yeah, here, “a while” means a long while, quite a long period of time, we can be sure. In other words, unbearably long to the speaker, whose team has endured defeat after defeat at their hands of their opponent.

Otherwise, you know, the speaker won’t make it a point admitting to the fact that the other team simply has “our number”.

And that implies they’re a totally better team, a team that has our team under their thumb. No matter what we do, they do better. No matter what we throw at them, they have no problem dealing with it. No matter how hard we try, they have no problem handling us. When the game is over, they come out on top. Always.

That’s been the case “for a while”, and they’ve always been able to beat us one way or another.

That’s what “having someone’s number” means as an idiom.

Literally, the “number” in “having someone’s number” may originally refer to their telephone number. TheIdioms.com, for instance, seems to share this view:

Some interpretations suggest a connection to the advent of telephone numbers. In 1879, during a measles epidemic in Lowell, Massachusetts, telephone subscribers were assigned numbers to facilitate communication. This practice led to the term “telephone number,” which was eventually shortened to “number.” Knowing someone’s number could have implied having the means to contact or reach them directly.

Plausible, I say.

Another theory points to gambling. GrammarBook.com, for example, believes in this school of thought:

The phrase “have someone’s number” originally comes from gambling, particularly card games like roulette, where “having the number” meant understanding which number was likely to win. Over time, it evolved into a broader idiomatic expression in English, used to describe someone’s characteristic patterns or intentions.

Plausible also, I would say.

Look at it this way. Take someone’s “number” as the sum total of them. Having or having got their number in possession then means that you’ve got all the information about them. You know who they are and what they’re up to. This knowledge gives you an insurmountable advantage. This enables you to own them and to control them, and, in a nutshell, to stay on top of them.

In sports, as is the case in our example, having their number translates to beating their team – without question and without fuss.

Without fuss, indeed. Let’s move onto media examples of “having someone’s number”:

1. The US men’s basketball team has been defeated 83-76 by France, losing at the Olympics for the first time since 2004 and for just the sixth time in the history of the tournament.

The French had upset the US men when they last met in the 2019 FIBA World Cup quarter-finals and they had their number again on Sunday in the first day of group play at the Saitama Super Arena near Japan’s capital Tokyo.

Evan Fournier scored 28 points for France, while Rudy Gobert scored 14 and Nando de Colo had 13.

Jrue Holiday had 18 points for the US, Bam Adebayo had 12, Damian Lillard 11 and Kevin Durant had 10 for the Americans – who are just 2-3 in their games this summer, the first four of them exhibitions in Las Vegas that were not supposed to mean much.

“It felt good, it felt good,” Fournier told the Reuters news agency.

The Americans got out to a good start in the first half, leading 45-37 at the break on the back of their defensive energy, but were outscored 25-11 in a disastrous third-quarter with France taking the lead.

Team USA clawed back to briefly regain the lead in the fourth quarter, but the French would not go away and took their first-ever Olympic win over the United States.

The US is always the team to win at basketball – they now have a 138-6 record and have won gold 15 times since joining the Olympic programme in 1936 – boasting more depth than any other country with their star-studded NBA line-ups.

- France shocks US to end 25-game Olympic basketball win streak, AlJazeera.com, July 25, 2021.com.

2. Vladimir Putin has had Donald Trump’s “number for some time … knows how to manipulate him” and still sees him “as an asset”, the former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill said, discussing the Russian leader and the Republican presidential frontrunner.

“That’s literally [Putin’s] trump card,” Hill told the One Decision Podcast, hosted by Jane Ferguson, a reporter, and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, when asked if she thought the Russian president, bogged down in war in Ukraine, was betting on Trump beating Joe Biden next year and returning to power.

Hill added: “The anticipation that Trump’s going to come back is something for Putin of a boon … he can play with that. He can use it as kind of a warning … scare the Ukrainians, the Europeans, the rest of the world. Putin is pretty confident, given his experiences with Trump in the past, that Trump will be quick to try to resolve the … war in Ukraine in his favor.

“And, you know, obviously, Putin has had Trump’s number for some time, he knows how to manipulate him … he has been very good at the art of flattery with Trump. He sees Trump as an asset in many respects.”

From 2017 to 2019 Hill was a senior national security aide in the Trump White House, eventually coming under the spotlight as a witness in Trump’s first impeachment, for seeking to blackmail Ukraine for dirt on political rivals. In 2013, she published Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, a widely praised study.

Though Hill made her name in Washington foreign policy circles she was born and raised in the north-east of England, attending St Andrews University in Scotland before studying at Harvard.

- Putin ‘has Trump’s number’ and still sees him ‘as an asset’, says Fiona Hill, TheGuardian.com, December 21, 2023.

3. Another game, another day of wondering, how are the Dodgers going to manage to lose this one?

Sunday saw the Dodgers get approximately a gazillion runners on base, give or take two or three, and only plate four of them. Monday the Dodgers couldn’t get anyone into scoring position until they finally got four runs in the eighth, but it wasn’t near enough as the pitching staff allowed seven runs mostly from an uncharacteristically bad outing by Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

So this leads one to wonder just how are the Dodgers going to manage to not win Tuesday’s game?

Tyler Anderson was slated to pitch for the Angels on Tuesday, but late Monday evening it was announced that Anderson is dealing with some back stiffness. Victor Mederos will go instead for his first career start.

Mederos has only pitched in two games for the Angels this season - one scoreless inning against Texas on July 7, and three innings in Minnesota on April 25, where he gave up two earned runs. However, his most recent outings for the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees, were going seven innings of one run ball, and four scoreless allowing three hits and six strikeouts.

While in the PCL, Mederos has a 3.55 ERA where the average ERA is 5.48. He has a 1.73 ERA since July 11. Mederos has reworked a lot of his delivery, dropping his arm slot 10 degrees, and adding a true sweeper to his arsenal. In short, with this being his first career start and the Dodgers history with these sorts of instances, expect the Dodgers to make him look like a superstar in the making out there.

For their part, the Dodgers will be sending Emmet Sheehan to the hill. Sheehan had a nice outing his last time out against the St Louis Cardinals, going five scoreless.

The Angels have had the Dodgers’ number so far this season. The cross town team swept the Dodgers in Dodger Stadium in May, and have won the first of this three game series in Anaheim. I guess we should all be happy the Dodgers will not face the Angels in the playoffs.

- Dodgers hope to finally solve Angels, by Andy Lane Chapman, TrueBlueLA.com, August 13, 2025.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）