Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams needed to shave. So did Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
However now Aaron Choose, Giancarlo Stanton and the remainder of the present Yankee roster will likely be allowed to develop “well-groomed beards” in the event that they so select, after the membership on Friday introduced a change to its longstanding grooming coverage.
The all-clear for beards was introduced by Hal Steinbrenner, the workforce’s managing normal accomplice whose father began the beard ban — and vigorously enforced it for years.
“After nice consideration, we will likely be amending our expectations to permit our gamers and uniformed personnel to have well-groomed beards shifting ahead,” Steinbrenner mentioned in a press release on Friday. “It’s the applicable time to maneuver past the acquainted consolation of our former coverage.
Because the Nineteen Seventies, the Yankees have barred their gamers, in addition to employees members, from having beards or lengthy hair. George Steinbrenner, Hal Steinbrenner’s father and the proprietor on the time, believed that neater look would promote professionalism and self-discipline amongst his gamers.
“I’m making an attempt to instill a sure sense of order and self-discipline within the ball membership, as a result of I feel self-discipline is essential in an athlete,” he mentioned in 1976.
Hal Steinbrenner mentioned at a information convention in a while Friday that gamers would nonetheless be required to have “a well-groomed, clear look.”
“You will need to the leaders of our workforce that we keep that disciplined look,” he mentioned.
Requested Friday what his father would have mentioned concerning the change, Hal Steinbrenner mentioned he believed that the possibility that some star gamers is perhaps reluctant to return to the Yankees due to the beard ban might need swayed him. “He is perhaps just a little extra apt to do the change that I did than folks assume.”
“Successful was a very powerful factor to my father,” he mentioned.
Whereas another main North American sports activities groups have insurance policies relating to gown or look, the Yankees’ beard coverage was among the many strictest, and positively probably the most well-known. That notoriety was compounded by the Yankees’ historical past of success — they’ve gained 27 World Sequence titles, 16 greater than every other workforce — and the seeming vanity it introduced, no less than as perceived by lots of its rivals.
Hal Steinbrenner mentioned within the assertion that he had consulted with “a lot of former and present Yankees, spanning a number of eras,” earlier than altering the coverage.
The coverage has often rankled members of the workforce. In one of the well-known incidents, Don Mattingly, the workforce’s greatest participant and captain in 1991, was pulled from the lineup and fined as a result of he declined to chop his hair.
“I’m overwhelmed by the pettiness of it,” Mattingly instructed reporters then. He relented quickly afterward and obtained a trim.
The incident was parodied in a 1992 episode of “The Simpsons.” Within the present, Mattingly joined a workforce owned by the character Mr. Burns, who made unreasonable calls for for Mattingly’s grooming after which kicked him off the workforce. Mattingly, who voiced his personal character, walked away saying, “I nonetheless like him higher than Steinbrenner.”
Lately, there was rising hypothesis that the coverage was hurting the Yankees’ probabilities of buying high quality gamers.
“You’d be shocked how rather more enticing the Yankees can be in the event that they removed that facial hair rule,” Cameron Maybin, a former Yankee, mentioned in 2023. “You wouldn’t imagine what number of high quality gamers simply assume it’s a wack rule to have.”
The Yankee coverage had formally said: “All gamers, coaches and male executives are forbidden to show any facial hair apart from mustaches (aside from non secular causes), and scalp hair might not be grown beneath the collar.”
“Hair coverage will stay the identical,” Hal Steinbrenner mentioned Friday.
Over the many years, the coverage led to awkward conversations during which Yankee managers needed to urge their typically well-paid gamers to get a shave or a trim. Some disagreed with the rule, however George Steinbrenner’s phrase was regulation.
The coverage additionally led to often-drastic transformations for bearded gamers who joined the Yankees from different groups. Amongst those that shaved away facial hair upon arrival to the Yankees had been Gerrit Cole in 2019, Nick Swisher in 2009 and Johnny Damon in 2006. Many different gamers grew beards again as quickly as they had been traded away from the workforce.
In 1981, the Yankee pitcher Goose Gossage determined to develop his (permitted) mustache longer, as a approach of flouting the ban. The ensuing Fu Manchu-style ’stache turned his trademark.
As not too long ago as a number of days in the past, the coverage was within the information. Devin Williams, who joined the Yankees this low season, had shaved his longstanding beard, nevertheless it started to develop again and may very well be seen in his official workforce picture, inflicting a minor kerfuffle.
Friday’s announcement ends, or no less than modifies, a coverage that affected so many generations of gamers that it developed its personal lore.
In a single oft-repeated story, a Yankee participant, Lou Piniella, pushed again on the edict, mentioning that Jesus had lengthy hair and a beard.
George Steinbrenner replied: “Stroll throughout that pond and you may have a beard and lengthy hair.”