TAMPA, Fla. -- Decades before George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees, the future Boss spent his high school years at Indiana boarding school from 1944-47.
Later, after earning a B.A. at Williams College in 1952, he joined the Air Force and was promoted to second lieutenant before getting an honorable discharge in 1954.
The discipline from spending his age 14-17 years at Culver Military Academy and his time at Lockbourne Air Force Base inspired Steinbrenner to adopt an appearance policy upon Yankees players and coaches four years after he purchased baseball's most famous and success franchise from CBS.
This appearance policy, which banned beards and hair below the collar started in 1976 and lasted almost 50 years. A lot of players disliked it, some hated it and everyone abided to it. Johnny Damon even agreed to give up the famed hippy look he had during his Red Sox seasons to cut his long hair and shave his beard to join the Yankees as a free agent.
Over the last decade or so, with George long gone and his youngest son well into his reign as managing partner of the family business, Hal Steinbrenner discussed making changes to the appearance policy with general manager Brian Cashman, family members, former Yankees and many others in and out of the organization.
Last Monday, day one of spring training for the Yankees' full squad, Steinbrenner had one-on-one meetings with three star players who have contracts worth more than $300 million -- team captain Aaron Judge, staff ace Gerrit Cole and slugger Giancarlo Stanton. He met with other players, too.
Steinbrenner learned a lot during these back-and-forth sessions. He discovered beards are very important to young men nowadays. He also was told that players like that the Yankees are different from every other team.
All of these discussions over the years and last Monday led to a stunning announcement Friday morning:
Before the Yankees' first spring training game, a 1:05 p.m., on a cold day at Steinbrenner Field, Hal Steinbrenner announced that his team's appearance policy has been altered.
Beards will be allowed for the first time since 1975.
Later in the morning, Steinbrenner made it known in a news conference that the Yankees' policy on hair is not changing.
For more than 20 minutes he and GM Brian Cashman detailed the new policy.
Hal Steinbrenner: "Debating and deliberating about this topic is something I've been doing with family members and staff for years. It comes up on a frequent basis. I took an extra step this off season by starting to talk to people that are with other organizations that I know that are in this industry about just why this is such an important topic, why having beards and being able to have beards is so important to this generation. I also talked to a lot of people that are not in the industry at all than I know, and those people were closer in age to the players than they are to me. So there was a lot of research done on that front.
"What did I learn from all these conversations? This generation, the vast majority of 20, 30s into the 40s men in this country, have beards. The new vice president has a beard. Members of Congress have a beard. The list goes on and on and on. In this country and in this world, it is a part of who these younger men are, t's part of their character, it's part of their persona.
"Do I totally relate to that? It's difficult for me. I'm an older guy who's never had a beard in his life. But it's a very important thing to them and they feel it defines their character. It is also the norm in this country for all the reasons I just talked about.
"So there are a lot of conversations had. I certainly learned a lot. But the most important thing for me was to sit down face-to-face with several of our players and several of our senior staff. I didn't want to do it over the phone. I didn't want to do it in a group setting. I did it in one-on-one settings. I felt that would be more productive And I did all that all Monday, the first full day of squad practice.
"There were a lot of things that were told to me that resonated. There were some things that were told to me that were concerning, even if they happen to be more of a hypothetical in nature. But the bottom line is, from those conversations and all the conversations I had in the off season in the last few years with people like Cash, I did make the decision that the policy that was in place was outdated.
"Given how important that generation and given that it is the norm in this world today that it was somewhat unreasonable, so I made the change. I talked to the players (Friday) morning at the team meeting. I think they understand what my thought process was as well."
Steinbrenner: "There will be parameters to this, and (the players) know that. ...
I did make it clear to the players that it's going to be a well-groomed clean look. It is important to the leaders of our team, who I talked to, that we maintain that discipline look.
"Hair policies, other policies are going to remain the same.
"The policy change will apply to coaches and personnel in the clubhouse. It will go past the players."
Steinbrenner: All of you know me well enough to know I don't like addressing hypotheticals, but I'm going to break my own rule today because this was a part of my thought process and part of the decision that I made. If I ever found out that a player we wanted to acquire to make us better, to get us a championship, would not come here because of that policy ... that would be very, very concerning. I'm fairly convinced that's a real concern.
"It's a concern that was raised by more than one person that I sat down with. And again, given that I now understand how important of an issue this is to this generation, it's logical that it can happen."
WHAT WOULD GEORGE THINK?
Steinbrenner: "Winning was the most important thing to my father. I think if somebody came and told him that they were very sure that this could affect us getting the players we want to get ...
"All we're trying to do every offseason is put ourselves in the best position to get a player that we're trying to get and if something like this would detract from that, lessen our chances, I think he might be a little more apt to do the change that I did than people think because it was about winning.
"Look, we are a family business. My dad was in the military. He believed that the team should look in a disciplined manner, and that's where this all really came from. He believed cleanly shaven, shoulder hair - although in the '70s he had his battles with players - was a necessary look for the New York Yankees. It was a look that he wanted his team to have, a discipline look.
"The leaders on our team who I've talked to find that to be very important as well. They brought that up without me even broaching the subject. So we will keep it that way.
"It was very important to my father, but to my father nothing was more important than winning. That's on my mind."
Steinbrenner: I'm not going to talk about which players I sat down with, but I will tell you it was a diverse group in that all of them have been here for a different period of time, some longer than others I felt that was important to get a good sampling, if you will."
Steinbrenner: "He, Gerrit Cole and Stanton, we've got some great leaders on this team and I met with all of them. I talked about my thoughts and why I'm considering this and I want to get your honest opinion. 'That's why it's just you and me.'
"The meetings were very productive. When Aaron came up through our organization, through our minor leagues ... He's a true Yankee and he cares about the team and the franchise. His comments resonated with me, as did the other players I talked to."
Steinbrenner: (They said), 'this is why it's important to our generation,' and not getting into whether they agree or disagree with the policy that's in place, but why it's important. And again, this concept and belief that we may very well be missing out on players, believe it or not, because of this one particular policy that they find very unreasonable.
Cashman: I think to Hal's point, this is kind of a situation where there's been so much change in the game, I think this is a little bit of an evolution and a nudge on our part to make an adjustment also and recognize.
"In our internal conversations over the last number of years, you see the uniform has changed. We're raising awareness and money for breast cancer awareness or prostate cancer using pink hats and pink shoes and blue hats and blue shoes. On military awareness weekend you're seeing camouflage hats.
"The old Yankee tradition was only black-shoe spikes, but now players with the latest consideration to the basic ingredient can wear any color shoes and any color belts they might want. We have attached sponsorship patch on the uniform, for instance.
"There's a lot of things that have changed over the course of time, and so a lot of the discussions we've had with players past and present ... I think I can share with you that being in a room with a potential draft prospect... 'Well, I prefer not to get drafted by you guys because of that policy.' We brought CC (Sabathia) here, but it was a hesitancy because of the facial-hair situation. I actually had a non-roster invite discussion this spring where the agent said the guy has to decide whether he wants to shave or not. So it's a real thing.
"To piggyback on what Hal said, the New York Yankees are different and we want to remain different. This is obviously a special place in baseball history. That logo has a lot of meaning behind it and we want our past and our present players to recognize that and the future players to recognize that. So ultimately, there's still going to be things that we're going to hold on to that are important for us.
"We want to separate ourselves from everybody else, be a little different, make us special, but I do think it's time."
Cashman: it looked like Austin Wells had to shave twice a day just to comply with the prior setup.
Steinbrenner: "No, not by the end of the conversation. I could tell there were a couple that have been here and are used to the way things are.
"That was the whole idea of this last step of this long process of mine, really get opinions and talk about not just the pros, but the cons as well.
"And I think once we did that, anybody that I was sitting in front of, I think everybody understood that this, maybe this is something that we should at least consider."