On April 15, 1972, during the Oakland A’s Opening Day 11-inning victory over the visiting Minnesota Twins, iconoclast Reggie Jackson reportedly became the first high-profile major leaguer to appear in a regular season game with a mustache since Wally Schang wiggled his ‘stache behind the plate for the Philadelphia A’s 58 years earlier, in 1914.
Although Major League Baseball never officially outlawed facial hair, teams, for the most part, nevertheless adhered to an unwritten rule against lip ticklers until Jackson stepped on the sun-drenched, Oakland field with a shadow above his lip, and immediately stirred up a Coliseum-sized shit-storm in the A's front office. Owner Charles Finley ordered manager Dick Williams to make Jackson shave it off. When Williams relayed the message to his superstar slugger, however, Jackson politely told his skipper where, exactly, he could stick his razor.
A few days later, Finley, a marketing genius, quickly reversed course and offered a $300 bonus for any player willing to grow his own mustache. Pitchers Jim "Catfish" Hunter and Rollie Fingers famously took him up on his offer. A trend was born. Later that season, Finley held a “Mustache Day,” which granted free admission for all mustachioed fans to the team’s Father's Day matinee. By mid-June, the entire 25-man roster sported mustaches, including the stodgy Williams. The team would ride their follicles—and an impressive staff ERA—all the way to the World Series, where they defeated Cincinnati's fresh-faced Big Red Machine in a 7-game match up of “The Hairs vs. The Squares.”
