Baseball's Hair-Brained History

While football is considering limits on hair length, baseball's hirsute history has been as wild as Oscar Gamble’s afro, Paul Lukas writes on ESPN.com. From its earliest days, the national pastime's hairstyles—on head and face alike—have mirrored attitudes in the country at large, and Lukas maps out the pony-tailed and mutton-chopped boys of summers past and present.

Facial hair, however, was often subject to the whims of team owners. In the 1960s, the Cincinnati Reds banned facial hair, and many teams followed suit. But not the Oakland Athletics, whose owner offered $3,000 to any player who grew a mustache in 1972—and wild hair, facial or otherwise, has been part of the sport since. (More baseball stories.)