The New York Yankees have abandoned their half-century prohibition of beards, a policy that was archaic even from its infancy. Now I find myself strangely, unexpectedly bereft, stroking my own beard in contemplation of what the world might lose when a Bronx Bomber goes unshaven.

The Yankees, as any Yankee fan will tell you, don’t have a mascot. They don’t put names on the back of their jerseys. And most crucially, they haven’t had a single player with a goatee, Van Dyke, or soul patch since 1976. This was the bedrock of Yankee exceptionalism. Although Joe DiMaggio famously said, “I want to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee”—the quote, printed on a sign, long greeted players as they entered the home dugout—the good Lord himself could never be a New York Yankee.

God, per many enduring renderings of him, still doesn’t meet the team’s grooming standards. Though the white-bearded God on the Sistine ceiling would no longer have to shave to play second base in the Bronx, he would have to trim his magnificent head of hair, which descends below his shirt collar. Or it would, if he wore a shirt collar. Baseball players don’t wear shirt collars at work, but the ban on over-the-collar hair still applies to the Yankees, for whom the mullet remains a bridge too far. After he was traded to the team in 2005, the Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson forsook his own Mississippi Mudflap, becoming business-in-the-front-business-in-the-back, which might as well be the Yankees’ motto.

[Mark Leibovich: How baseball saved itself]

Like a restaurant that still requires diners to wear a jacket, the beardless Yankees upheld a pointless standard long after the rest of society had moved on. “The vast majority of 20s, 30s into the 40s men in this country have beards,” the Yankees’ managing general partner, Hal Steinbrenner, said in reversing the policy implemented by his late father, George, an ex–Air Force man. He seemed to ignore  the fact that the clean-shaven Yanks were admirable, even aspirational.

These were men, I always inferred, who made their bed, shined their shoes, and flossed. My own ex-Army father, seeing me with a two-day growth of stubble, always said: “You stood too far from your razor today.” It was only after he died, last April, at age 89, having shaved until the second-to-last day of his life, that I dared to grow my own beard. “Going for a Hemingway thing?” a friend asked.

No, but the Yankees beard ban did impugn, by implication, the personal grooming habits of countless great men: Socrates and Shakespeare, Darwin and da Vinci, LeBron James and Lionel Messi. None would have been allowed to scratch himself in the home dugout at Yankee Stadium. It has often been said that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for General Motors. (That was in the middle of the previous century, when both factories were rolling out winners year after year.) If we may extend the automotive metaphor: The unbearded Yankees were a Ford (Whitey), not a Lincoln (Abe). This arrogance, this over-the-top exclusivity, suited the Yankees.

The rest of baseball abandoned classic home and road uniforms for the permanent casual Friday of “alternate jerseys” (beginning in earnest at the turn of this century) and “City Connects” (which Nike introduced in 2021), but the Yankees still only ever wear pinstripes at home—though those pinstripes are now sullied by a sleeve patch advertising an insurance company, another inevitable bow to modernity.

It’s a wonder the team held out this long on facial hair. George Steinbrenner instituted the no-beards-or-hippie-hair rule around the same time Archie Bunker was ridiculing his son-in-law, “the Meathead,” for wearing long hair on All in the Family. Even in 1976, Archie was an anachronism, and with their tonsorial rectitude, the Yankees instantly became one too. Barry Gibb, Bob Seger, and Kris Kristofferson were bearded gods in their pop-cultural prime in 1976, which was not just America’s bicentennial but also an annus mirabilis of magnificent facial hair. That October, the Yankees lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, who did have a mascot, Mr. Redlegs—he was clean-shaven then but now sports a cartoon-villain mustache.

[Kaitlyn Tiffany: Why are baseball players always eating?]

Until the past decade or so, Major League Baseball was a conservative institution, slow to evolve with the times. Ballparks still have signs warning visitors to stay off the grass. But the Yankees, with their fussy barbering rules, took “Get off my lawn” to another level. On the facial-hair front, they were Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud, King Canute trying to hold back the tide. And it worked. As those tides of fashion waxed and waned, the Yankees remained clean-shaven colossi, bringing their total number of World Series wins up to 27, 16 more than their nearest rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, with their bearded icons Ozzie Smith, Bruce Sutter, and Al Hrabosky.

All of that has changed now. “Our new vice president has a beard,” Hal Steinbrenner said by way of justification. “Members of Congress have a beard.”

And just like that, the Bronx Bombers have become a little more like everybody else, one more institution in flux. In the name of progress, they’ve emulated Congress. Talk about a beard-scratcher.

*Source Images: George Rinhart / Corbis / Getty; Bettmann / Getty; Sports Studio Photos / Getty.

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Last week, I pronounced unequivocal judgment—as I tend to do regarding many things—on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I think it’s a contrived and embarrassing idea driven by nostalgia and capitalism, and antithetical to the youthful rebelliousness that drives rock-and-roll music.

Usually, I make these pronouncements and then let the chips fall. This time, however, we asked The Daily’s readers for their views. And I was surprised: Many of you, far more than I expected, agreed with me. But your responses—and I regret that I could not include more of them here—also raised some good points of disagreement.

First, of course, a fist bump to the folks who agreed with my basic argument that the idea of the Rock Hall, not the building itself, is the problem. One reader, Brian, thought the degree to which the whole thing was “over-hyped” was “really quite sad and pathetic, actually.” Pamela wrote that the Rock Hall reminded her of the participation trophies given to her children years ago: “They, too, were unnecessary, and in my mind are a very similar notion as inducting random old rockers for random attributes into the random concept of a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”

Right on, Pamela, and I want you to know I made devil horns with my fingers and bobbed my head while reading your comment.

Ahem. Moving on. Some of you volunteered your ages, and many of you chided me for being churlish about nostalgia. Angie, 67, said that she looks back on her youth “fondly” and has no issue with reminders of some of “the best days of my life.” And many readers took offense at the fact that I have never actually been to the Rock Hall or to Cleveland: They thought I was attacking the museum and the city. M Anderson didn’t pull any punches: “Ah, Tom, to have such a low opinion of a place that you admit you have never visited—the deeply entertaining Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—is just wrong. Do yourself a favor and visit the place … Your narrow and uninformed opinion comes off as beneath you, and that is [a] sad fact of too many opinion pieces today.”

And a good day to you, sir or madam. Look, I’m sure I’d find the exhibits in Cleveland fascinating. I love pop-culture museums. I’ve been to the Louvre and seen the Mona Lisa, but it wasn’t nearly the thrill of gawking at Archie Bunker’s chair or at a costume the late Christopher Reeve once wore as the greatest movie Superman. I’m the guy, after all, who loves Las Vegas, and I read the plaques and labels on almost every bit of memorabilia plastered on the walls of its casinos and restaurants. But I don’t need a committee of music pooh-bahs to tell me that the Beatles were great while they also tell me that Mary J. Blige or Donovan are legendary “rock” stars. It’s not about Cleveland or the Hall itself, I promise.

As Anders, a reader from Minnesota, rightly notes, the word rock is now thrown around so loosely “that it doesn’t seem to have much real meaning in regard to the actual Hall of Fame these days. And while I’m sure any band would mostly be honored to be recognized by the Hall, I don’t begrudge those like Iron Maiden who laugh in its face.” Exactly. Although Iron Maiden isn’t my cup of grain alcohol, I get why they and other bands likely wouldn’t give a hoot about getting an attaboy from the suits in the music industry.

A Canadian reader, Laura, spoke for many of you when she suggested just having a general rock museum, especially if it could ensure that lesser-known works “don’t get lost among the big names.” But that’s the problem with a “hall of fame”: The museum aspect is lost in the spectacle of voting and the sometimes wince-inducing performances of the inductees.

Lee pointed out that the Rock Hall “is organized primarily around how much curatable material has been donated,” which means that the origins of rock in the Deep South and the Mississippi Delta are ignored, while there is an “abundance of space dedicated to midwestern bands that nobody has heard of that were inconsequential.” Lee is right that “when Elvis is celebrated as a bedrock of rock and roll, and the people he imitated [are] ignored[,] the whole thing is disingenuous.”

Jay from Washington State was also pretty blunt: “The problem for the hall is that rock is in fact essentially a dead art form. Trying to be really good at it today is a bit like trying to be an impressionist painter in the 1960s—it might be nice to look at or hear, but it’s been done (to death) by now.” I’m not sure rock is dead, but Jay is right that the period we normally associate with the rise of rock as a music form, a 20-year span that begins in the mid-’50s, was a cultural moment in time, not an ongoing revolution.

Let’s end on a more positive note. One thing the Rock Hall can do is keep reintroducing music to younger listeners. Sandra, 82, wrote: “I can attest the museum is an enjoyable visit to the past. However after going to a recent Billy Joel concert I realized nothing can replace youth or innocence.” True enough, but each generation can offer the music of its youth to the next generation. As Gael MacGregor, a recording artist who once sang backup for the legendary Dick Dale, warned us in her note: “Ageism in the arts has always been an issue—whether the claim is ‘You’re too young to know anything,’ or ‘You’re too old to be singing/playing this music.’”

So let’s celebrate the one thing the Rock Hall does well: start arguments about music. That’s a good thing, because then we all have to be aware of the acts we’re talking about. Ralph, a 77-year old reader, recently lost his wife of 52 years. (Our condolences, Ralph.) “The songs of lost love I listened to in my teens,” he wrote, “have a painful new resonance now.” But Ralph also saw these older songs as a bridge: “Maybe the Hall of Fame will inspire some new listeners to experience these old artists,” he said, “but will it light their fire”?

Perhaps the Rock Hall isn’t a great idea, but if it gets us to listen to the music, then long may it stand on the shores of Lake Erie.

Related:

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame should not exist. The secret joys of geriatric rock

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Trump’s sentencing made no one happy. Trump is right that Pax Americana is over, Charles A. Kupchan argues. These bizarre theories about the L.A. wildfires endanger everyone.

Today’s News

President-Elect Donald Trump was sentenced to unconditional discharge in his New York criminal hush-money case. He will avoid jail time, fines, and probation for his conviction, but he became the first president to be sentenced as a felon. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the TikTok case. The justices seem likely to uphold the law that could ban the app. Meta is ending major DEI programs at the company, including for “hiring, development and procurement practices,” according to Axios.

Dispatches

Atlantic Intelligence: Scientists have collected troves of DNA and microscopic imaging data from human cells—and now they have a tool that might make sense of all that information, Matteo Wong writes. The Books Briefing: Boris Kachka explains why The Atlantic’s Books department likes to make an extra toast on January 1 for a concurrent holiday: Public Domain Day.

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Evening Read

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The Return of Havana Syndrome

By Shane Harris

Two years ago, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded, in unusually emphatic language, that a mysterious and debilitating ailment known as “Havana syndrome” was not the handiwork of a foreign adversary wielding some kind of energy weapon. That long-awaited finding shattered an alternative theory embraced by American diplomats and intelligence officers, who said they had been victims of a deliberate, clandestine campaign by a U.S. adversary, probably Russia, that left them disabled, struggling with chronic pain, and drowning in medical bills. The intelligence report, written chiefly by the CIA, appeared to close the book on Havana syndrome.

Turns out, it didn’t.

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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