Rant #3,642: The Hair On My Chinny Chin Chin

My son's interview went fine on Friday.

We won't hear back from them for two weeks, so I am not going to worry about it.

Now onto other things ...

As you know, the biggest story of baseball's spring training has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening on the field, it's what's happening on the face.

The New York Yankees have partially rescinded a team rule of 49 years' standing, and are now permitting "nicely groomed" facial hair on their players.

The rule was put into place in the mid-1970s, when owner George Steinbrenner believed that fine grooming would set his team apart from others, and provide the team with a standard of grooming that was a mix of military and college football mores.

Hal Steinbrenner, George Steinbrenner's son who now runs the show in the Bronx, just felt it was time to relax the rules a wee bit.

He said something to the effect that he hopes ballplayers have not been turned off for possibly playing for the Yankees because of the old rule, a rule which is not totally out the window with this change.

Players can still have facial hair, but it must be trimmed, and the same things goes for their head hair.

(So they can't look like former Colorado Rockies' player Charlie Blackmon, above.)

Massive amounts of jewelry during a game remains prohibited, as do massive tattoos on the players' arms.

I think team captain Aaron Judge said it best when responding to Steinbrenner's belief that the original no facial hair edict was turning off players.

He said (paraphrase), "If the rule bothered any player thst much, then maybe they shouldn't really be a New York Yankee."

Me, I hate to shave to begin with. But I do shave my face twice a week.

I don't look good in a beard, as it grows in in about three different colors, and it itches like crazy.

So if I was one of the Yankees' players, all it would mean to me is that I wouldn't have to shave every day anymore.

I wish the hair on my head would grow as much as my facial hair, but that boat left the shore about 40 years ago, and it isn't coming back.

So when you see the Yankees play this year, some will have beards, some will have some shadows on their faces, and some will have full-fledged facial hair.

If it gets them back to the World Series, and they win it, this will all be worth it.

Otherwise, the tumult it caused in the sporting world reminded us that we are only in February, and that we still have more than a month to go before the actual 2025 Major League Baseball season to begin.

And as an aside to this, there remains one professional sports team that still has a "no facial hair" grooming rule, and that is--

The National Hockey League's New York Islanders.

I guess that with the Yankees' relaxing of their rule, the puck really does stop on the ice when it comes to facial hair on professional athletes.

"Hair today," but you can't say "gone tomorrow" anymore, at least on the baseball field.