Trim with the tide
TAMPA — Late last season, I chatted with a baseball person who knows Clint Frazier well, and the person’s perspective on the Yankees’ colorful outfielder stuck with me:
“If there’s one concern I have with him, it’s that he’ll be veryry aware of everything going on around him,” said the person, who made clear his admiration for Frazier. “He’s not the type off guy who can just come to work and block out all of the noise.”
Fast-forward to Friday at George M. Steinbrenner Field: Before he even boarded the bus for Clearwater, the minor league outfielder held a news conference … to discuss his haircut.
Do any colleges down here offer a Noise Management 1011 course at night?
In a vacuum, you laugh off this story as nonsensical, a relic of a bygone era, when hair lengths exemplified people’s values. However, if you root for the Yankees, you hope Frazier realizes the value to this no-harm, no-foul episode: It’s hard enough succeeding at this job without getting in your own way.
“We have rules in place,” said manager Joe Girardi, who met with Frazier on Thursday and strongly conveyed the haircut request to him. “In reality, when he was on the field, [Frazier’s hair] met the criteria, but it had become somewhat of a distraction, and I didn’t want that in here. He didn’t want that. He made a choice.”
“I like my hair,” Frazier said. “But I love playing for this organization more.”
The organization, since the late Steinbrenner patriarch’s heyday, strictly has enforced a grooming code regarding hair on the head (not too long, essentially) and on the face (mustaches only). AllStars from other places like Johnny Damon and Randy John- son cleaned up their act upon signing, and franchise icon Don Mattingly memorably got benched and fined in 1991 when he refused to get a trim. “I feel the whole organization has a feeling about continuing — if I can say this with respect — the way the old guard wanted it,” said Yankees special advisor Reggie Jackson, who has served as confidante to Frazier. “And so the way the sheriff wanted it is how we want to continue to do things.”
Frazier’s poofy red hair, perhaps compliant by law, violated the rule’s common-sense spirit. For a rookie, in this corporate culture, it didn’t play well.
“Just after thinking to myself and talking to a few people, I finally came to the agreement that it’s time to look like everybody else around here,” Frazier said, in words that will serve as a gut punch to non-conformists everywhere.
Is the policy ridiculous? Nah. It helps the Yankees stand out. All of their legends have been cleancut. It makes for a harmlessly fun discussion topic.
The Yankees, looking to manufacture lemonade out of these silly lemons, posted on Twitter an image of Frazier’s haircut — the clubhouse staff called in a barber at 7:15 in the morning — and preserved Frazier’s shorn curly reds to donate to Locks of Love.
Frazier moves forward. The extra attention this spring, he said, has “not been uncomfortable for me. I think that in the past, I’ve performed well enough to kind of draw attention to myself, so I’ve gotten used to it a little bit. But I’m just trying to be a good teammate and respect the guys around me and ultimately be a part of something special here.”
He can do that. The shorter he keeps his hair, the better his chances.