As a boy who hasn't gotten a haircut in about...oh, 7 years I think now, I tend to do a fair amount of thinking about male fashion, and what is allowed, not allowed, or of course just frowned upon. And one recent thing I've found myself focusing on a little bit, as I do some summer watching of baseball, is the New York Yankees organization, and their policy when it comes to the appearance of their ball players.
A lot of people might not realize (maybe not even some Yankees fans?) but the Yankees are actually the only ball club in the Major leagues, who have such a strict policy on appearance. A Yankee player, whether often on the bench or famous like Derek Jeter, must have short hair, a shaved face, and if they have visible tattoos, the player actually has to wear sleeves. If they do not comply, they actually have to leave the organization. Not surprisingly, some very good players have actually taken off, just because the Yankees wouldn't let them grow their hair.
At any rate, the reason I wanted to talk about this was because, I personally believe -- especially as a resident of the New York tri-state area, where this ball club is gigantic -- that this policy they have, actually effects way more people than just the players on the team. I know some folks will think it sounds absurd to say, but hear me out for a second.
In the first place, just dwell for a moment on my own experience with this weird dress code policy that only the Yanks have: Growing up, I started watching the Yankees pretty religiously from about the ages of 6 to around 12 or 13 years old. Like many other kids in the Tri-state area, I was a major fan and many of the players who were on the team back in the 1996-2001 seasons were some of the first grown adults I can ever remember truly idolizing. I vividly remember watching them and wanting to wear the hat and the socks and everything just the precise way that they did. The image of these men and how they looked, with no beards, short hair, and no tattoos, and of course the clean Yankees uniforms, became emblazoned in my head, from a young age.
To this day, I tune into a Yankees game, and I see the uniform, and its like I can feel chills down my spine. This is coming from someone who hasn't really followed the team in years now, basically since I was 13. Yet when I see the player in that uniform, its still as if its the nicest outfit of al time, that anyone can wear. It is an association I made when i was very young; and it is still very strong. People who won at life wore that uniform, people who were beloved by literally everybody. A great Yankee player is not really like any other character in pop culture. He is essentially beloved by all people...there's no reason to dislike him. Women find him attractive, men can't deny he seems like a nice fellow, children idolize them innocently, and they never do anything weird (like a music star or a movie star might). A great Yankee ball player is just automatically beloved -- and so too, naturally, does his image become beloved, no matter what image he chooses.
Now what I find very interesting about my attraction to the specific Yankee player is that it doesn't seem to carry over to any of the other ball clubs. Indeed, when i see the other ball players from other teams pop up with big old beards, long hair (like my own) and tattoos, it's almost like I'm looking at aliens. After so many years watching only the Yanks as a boy, with their clean cut look, its as though my mind is not programmed to fully accept anything else and, even though I have incredibly long hair myself, it's somehow like these guys just look plain wrong. It's like I'm not watching real baseball or something. Some Yankees fans might like this, of course. They might think it makes the Yankees better, because ,in fact, it does make them stand out (strangely enough) more than these other players with no dress code.
I myself, however, tend to think its a negative and a big problem. I think that my brain was forced to see things this way, thanks to this dumb dress code policy. I also think that its completely out of step with the real spirit that i, personally, see in a sport like baseball. To me, a baseball diamond is like a nature reserve in the middle of every city, and the players get dirty, and they go a bit wild too, so why shouldn't they be allowed to look a bit wild?
So my complaints are this: I think that the Yankees dress code policy is actually having a much bigger effect than most would think on American male fashion at large (anyone who would deny that pro athletes styles don't effect regular men is a blind fool), and in addition to that, I think it is making sports, and particularly baseball of course, look bad, in 2018. I said already that I believe this weird policy is effecting the world of general male fashion. So now imagine how much i believe it's effecting the world of men who like sports. The effect, i feel, is dramatic, and like i say, its making sports look plain ... well, plain! And maybe I don't really think they should look plain. Especially with all the talking that goes on about how connected sports are to politics recently, I think it might be really important that we lose the image of them as being "conservative".
So now lets start with some facts, about why I feel this dress code policy is effecting us all, instead of just this one team: For as much as everyone swears that football is the biggest sport in the country, the truth is that the Yankees, as a team, and as a piece of US history, are significantly more famous than any other sports organization. Not only that, but the Yankees are a thing that spans what you might call 'the great divide'. The great divide is that borderline which separates the people who are crazy for sports from those of us who just sort of 'hear about it' and occasionally watch. The Yankees, unlike basketballs very popular Los Angeles Lakers, or footballs Dallas Cowboys, tend to come up repeatedly in conversations about American history. Not only this, but the old players are extremely well known and the team has been mentioned in songs, literature, and last but never least, the Yankees hat is literally everywhere, including overseas. And all of this is to say that, even though football might be more popular for a few months every fall, the truth is that this New York baseball team, even if you don't dig them, has way more of a stranglehold over US culture at large, than anything else. If you look at maps of where folks root for the Yanks, you might be surprised to find taht even entire counties out in places like Nebraska and Wyoming, root only for the Yanks. Thats weird -- and something tells me it doesn't happen for the LA Lakers.
So, having said all of that, we now go back to the subject of the Yankees weird dress code policy. Keeping in mind how much of a cultural presence this team is and has been for literally a century in the States, does my reader seriously want to tell me, that they think the dress code policy, and the fact that every Yankee is so clean cut, really isn't effecting male fashion culture at large? It absolutely is! There's no way it isn't. Especially when you keep in mind that, even this team has a bad season, they are still always considered "the great winners". So what does that make all the other ball clubs, who don't have a dress policy, in the eyes of the People? It makes them all losers...and by extension, their whacky hairstyles and beards, also become signs of "loserdom" as well.
In a very real way, I quite seriously believe that the Yankees dress code policy, is actually a dress code policy for all American men. After all, as i already explained, this team is literally being kept inside the beating heart of US male culture.
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