This Week in Baseball: Fear The Brew Manchu

Click Image to Enlarge

Major League Baseball in the Good 'Ol U.S. of A. began in earnest earlier this month. Perhaps no other recognized sport in this country celebrates facial hair to the extent that professional baseball does. Granted, the heyday of the moustache in baseball and beyond reached its most recent pinnacle sometime during the 1970s, but I believe that facial hair is in the process of making a sizable comeback. The above image of a man holding up a sign (of what is probably his own making and design) portends as much, sent to me by a rabid fan of the True Blue Brew Crew (a blood relation of mine as it happens*).

This picture is interesting for a couple of reasons. Primarily, it makes a fairly novel pun. "Brew Manchu" is not your typical baseball joke, and for my money it's a pretty good one. Secondarily, the moustached man holding the sign up is in all likelihood referring to himself on his own sign. I applaud inventive self-referential behavior such as this in the context of sporting events, especially with regard to moustache-themed puns. And finally, the fu manchu style of facial hair was adapted by a large contingent of the 1973 Milwaukee Brewers, making them what I believe to be the most fu-manchu'd team in the history of the game. If nothing else, they were certainly the most brew-manchu'd team from a historical vantage point.

The Milwaukee Brewers of 2010 are no slouches in the facial hair department, however. A cursory examination of their active roster would lead one to believe that 10 out of 12 of the pitch-men (a 19th century term for "pitcher" since corrupted by television) maintain some degree of facial hair. One could make the case that fully 2/3 of the rest of the team is bearded/moustached/etc. All of this is subject to daily facial hair flux of course- some players may shave more often/closer to the face/etc. than others.

Regrettably, the fu manchu is currently absent on all of the faces of the entire roster to the best of my knowledge, but there is no reason that individual facial hair stylings should remain permanent or eternal. It is a long season in baseball, with plenty of opportunities for personal growth of all sorts.

And it wouldn't be a proper pogonological posting without the likes of an image of this man somewhere in the post:

Take Me Out To The Ballgame - ...

*Special thanks to Mattat, Destroyer of All That Is Good, for the image which inspired this post.

-The Pogonologist