Give it, give me, Effectively Wild,

Give me, Give me, Effectively Wild.

Give it, Give me, Effectively Wild.

This is Effectively Wild.

Hello, and welcome to episode 2287 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGrafts,

presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. Well, we have two team previews today. We're actually going past the halfway point already in the season preview series. Yeah, we're sailing along here.

So we will have Kennedy Landry of MLB.com to talk about the Texas Rangers and John Prado of Pittsburgh Baseball now to talk about the Pittsburgh Pirates.

But before we get to our previews, two eras ended, not just the end of an era, but the end of two eras potentially, the era of MLB being on ESPN and the era of no facial hair being on Yankees' cheeks.

The beard policy is no more, or at least it's greatly amended.

The Yankees will be allowing beards, not just any beard, well-groomed

beards.

Yeah.

But still...

They can't help themselves, can they?

No, no, they can't quite get there, but...

Yeah.

I don't know exactly the genesis of this.

Hal Steinbrenner made it sound like this is something that's been in the works for a while that they've had conversations about. He said in recent weeks, I've spoken to a large number of former and current Yankees spanning several eras to elicit their perspectives on our longstanding facial hair and grooming policy. And I appreciate their earnest and varied feedback.

I'd love to know what it was.

Varied.

...