Don't Like - Yankees With Beards

Johnny Damon before and after joining the Yankees…

One of the most peculiar rules in baseball has fallen today: Yankees players will now be allowed to have well-groomed beards. Since 1970s, Hal Steinbrenner had instituted a policy that all New York Yankees players be clean shaven unless they chose to have a mustache. There were no exceptions to this rule and many a great baseball player was forced to shave their beard to suit up in pinstripes. This, of course, is the kind of thing that grown men shouldn’t be forced to do. Baseball players should be free to express themselves however they like, right? Well, not if they play for The Evil Empire. Dress codes, particularly facial hair ones, are fascist affairs and there’s no force more evil in baseball than the Yankees. This is all part and parcel of playing on the team that the entire world roots against.¹ So now it’s like, what gives? Are they all of a sudden The Lesser of Two Evils Empire? Do Faustian bargains come with caveats now? Many will see this as a good thing—and that’s precisely the problem.

1. This is historically true, though right now my beloved The Dodgers are the team accused of ruining baseball. But I still think everyone should root against the Yankees and New York.