The New York Yankees are baseball’s biggest team. Forty-six years later, the Yankees still make players break out the razor when they join the club.
They aren’t the only team to use such a policy over the years, or even the originators of the idea, but the policy has become part of the Yankees’ identity.
Former New York outfielder Cameron Maybin joined the group Thursday, tweeting that the rule makes the team a less attractive destination for free agents and that many players think the rule is “wack.”
“This might be an unpopular take to Yankees fans, but you’d be surprised how much more attractive the Yankees would be if they got rid of that facial hair rule.”
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It’s not surprising that some players have issues with the no-facial-hair rule, as it is a fairly bizarre thing to tell grown men what they are allowed to have on their faces while playing for your team.
Former Yankees outfielder Andrew McCutchen also ripped the policy after leaving the team, saying it “takes away from our individualism.”
If we’re being real here, the Yankees’ policy has survived all these years because they are the Yankees, and being the Yankees means holding onto anything that makes you feel special.
The team might also feel pretty special, in a different way, if a much-wanted free agent ever signs elsewhere and says he turned down the team’s offer because of the policy.
In order for the Yankees to attract even more stars from a new generation of baseball, one former Yankee — MLB journeyman Cameron Maybin — believes the team would stand to gain from dropping its half-century old policy of forbidding its players from having facial hair.
“This might be an unpopular take to Yankees fans, but you’d be surprised how much more attractive the Yankees would be if they got rid of that facial hair rule,”
Maybin wrote in a post.
The Yankees’ facial hair rules were adopted in the mid-1970s, with then-owner George Steinbrenner and manager Billy Martin forbidding players from having beards, mutton chops or long hair.
Maybin’s MLB career included a stop with the Yankees in 2019, when he was brought to New York in a trade with Cleveland.
