New York Yankees players will finally be able to sport beards, the team announced on Friday, shaving the club’s “outdated” and “unreasonable” grooming policy.
Managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said he’s been speaking former and current Yankees for years about the archaic rule against beards set by his late father George Steinbrenner nearly half a century ago.
While a final policy is still being drawn up, the younger Steinbrenner made it clear that some beards will soon be allowed inside the Yankees clubhouse.
“I did make the decision that the policy, that was in place, was outdated,” Steinbrenner told reporters in Tampa before his team’s spring training opener. “And given how important it is to that generation, and given that it is the norm in this world today, that it was somewhat unreasonable, so I made the change.”
Players were told about the change during a team meeting on Friday.
“I think they understand what my thought process was as well,” Steinbrenner said. “There will be parameters to this and they know that just as we have parameters to our other policies and guidelines.”
Steinbrenner said Vice President JD Vance’s whiskers played a role in his decision. Vance is believed to be the first VP with facial hair since President Herbert Hoover’s No. 2, Charles Curtis, nearly a century ago.
“The vast majority of 20s, 30s into the 40s men in this country have beards,” Steinbrenner said. “Our new vice president has a beard. Members of Congress have a beard. The list goes on and on and on in this country and in this world. It is a part of who these younger men are. It’s part of their character. It’s part of their persona.”
Roots of beardless policy date back to 1973 shortly after a group of investors, including George Steinbrenner, purchased the struggling franchise from CBS.
The man who’d later be called “The Boss” immediately targeted some of the most famous Yankees of that era — Sparky Lyle, Thurman Munson, Bobby Murcer, Fritz Peterson and Roy White — to clean up unkempt mustaches, mutton chops and long hair.
The rule was eventually tweaked to allow for mustaches, but no beards. Hair from the scalp could not touch collars.
For generations, Yankees players — often grudgingly — complied with the rule that seemed to have no equivalent in baseball or any other pro sport.
In the NHL, beards are practically encouraged as a unifying, team-building exercise each playoff season.
When Yankees ace Gerrit Cole signed a nine-year, $324 million Bronx contract in the winter of 2019-20, he knew a price of that deal included losing his beard.
“I haven’t shaved in like 10 years, but you know what? So be it,” Cole said at the time. “That’s the way it is. If you’re a Yankee, you shave. That’s what’s up.”
While the deep-pocketed Yankees have always been one of baseball’s most attractive destinations, it’s been suggested their efforts to sign free agents has been hampered by the grooming policy.
The Yankees have won more World Series than any other team, but they’ve not hoisted a Commissioner’s Trophy since 2009.
New York’s desperation to break this championship dry spell was heightened by the team’s World Series loss this past fall to the super power Los Angeles Dodgers, who keep signing prized free agents.
“All of you know me well enough to know I don’t like addressing hypotheticals — but I’m going to break my own rule today, because this was a part of my thought process and a part of the decision that I made,” Steinbrenner said.
“If I ever found out that a player we wanted to acquire to make us better, to get us a championship, did not want to be here … because of that policy, as important it is, again to that generation, that would be very, very concerning.”
He added: “I am fairly convinced that that’s a real concern.”
The Yankees’ anachronistic grooming policy was lampooned as far back as 1992, when a young Fox show, “The Simpsons,” aired “Homer at the Bat,” which became one its most famous episodes.
Don Mattingly, the Yankees star first baseman of the 1980s and early ’90s, voiced himself in that episode when his character was thrown off a company softball team by plant owner Montgomery Burns for allegedly sporting sideburns.
“Still like him better than Steinbrenner,” Mattingly’s animated character muttered as he left the diamond.
