One of the antiquated insurance policies in sports activities is useless. On Friday the New York Yankees introduced that they have been rescinding their 49-year-old coverage of banning facial hair for gamers and group workers, now permitting “well-groomed beards.”
The Yankees’ “look coverage” first began when George Steinbrenner took over the group in 1973, and made an official group rule in 1976. Whereas facial hair was baked into the historical past of baseball, by the Sixties and Seventies it had largely fallen out of favor in tight-laced circles. On the time facial hair was seen as indicative of counter-culture, rock and roll, and hippy actions. Steinbrenner adopted his model of the coverage from the Cincinnati Reds, who had banned all facial hair for gamers in 1967 — although it was the Yankees’ coverage that grew to become maligned through the years because of their prominence in baseball.
Cincinnati dropped its facial hair coverage in 1999, with the Yankees being the final bastion of “decency” in baseball. It rapidly grew to become indicative of managerial overreach, with gamers sacrificing their persona to embrace “The Yankee Means.” One of the notable current examples was when Johnny Damon left the Purple Sox in 2006 to affix the Yankees, dropping his signature lengthy hair and 5 o’clock shadow to change into the final word sellout firm man.
The coverage had been the supply of ridicule through the years, particularly as participant company arose in sports activities. The grooming requirements the Yankees upheld grew to become some extent of ridicule, routinely being mocked in media — together with most notably The Simpsons within the seminal episode “Homer at Bat,” written in 1992. In it Mr. Burns performs the Steinbrenner position, yelling at Don Mattingly to “GET RID OF THOSE SIDEBURNS!” poking enjoyable at a real-life incident from 1991 when Mattingly was pulled out of the lineup for refusing to chop his hair.
Now the coverage is useless, and we wait to see who the primary Yankees will probably be to develop out their beards and rejoice their individuality.