The Mustache Gang is a term coined for the 1972 Oakland Athletics baseball team, a team that broke the traditionally conservative baseball views by sporting mustaches. From the change in American men's fashion away from facial hair in the 1920s to the early 1970s, there had only been two baseball players who had facial hair during the regular season: Stanley "Frenchy" Bordagaray of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who was then ordered to shave by his manager, and Wally Schang of the Philadelphia A's.[1]
This changed when A's outfielder Reggie Jackson showed up to spring training with a fully grown mustache which would later be thought of as the catalyst that sparked the move away from the conservative baseball era. This move led to that year's World Series to be dubbed "Hairs vs. Squares",[2] as the Oakland A's Mustache Gang faced off with the conservatively clean-shaven Cincinnati Reds.
- ^ Jordan, David M. (2014). The A's: A Baseball HIstory. McFarland & Co. pp. 128–134. ISBN 978-1-4766-1387-1.
- ^ "Hairs vs. Squares: the 1972 Mustache Gang | Oaklandish". oaklandish.com. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. Retrieved 2015-10-20.