The Roidbeard: An investigation into baseball's modern facial hair craze

Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were named co-sportsmen of the year by Sports Illustrated in 1998. They had revitalized the dying sport that was baseball, making the strike of four years earlier feel like a foggy distant memory. In commemorating the occasion, the two men were literally likened to gods on the cover of the year-end edition of the magazine:

And yet, barely a decade later, baseball fans and media members alike looked back with embarrassment. People felt cheated, like their heroes had deceived them into falling back in love with a corrupt game. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire went from literal gods saving the game to the biggest culprits behind its destruction, deserving the loss of a third of their stats and no recognition by the baseball hall of fame. But why were we all so surprised? After all, a simple glance at Pirates-era Bonds compared to Giants-era Bonds looks like what appears to be two entirely different players:

While most players bulk up over the course of their career, something about the physical changes of the most notorious PED abusers seems especially jarring. A similar side-by-side for other players starts to reveal what they have in common beyond just their impressive stature.

Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire all underwent a similar and obvious extreme physical transformation as Barry Bonds.

The most notable steroid users all seem to have magically received an inflated head and/or neck along with their other late-career physical changes, with Bonds especially being regularly questioned about his head size. In recent years, as steroid testing has become more thorough and apparently more difficult to circumvent, seemingly only borderline major leaguers (such as Alec Asher, Abraham Almonte and David Paulino) trying to establish themselves as regulars, or the occasional all-star but not MVP caliber player (such as Dee Gordon, Ervin Santana, and Starling Marte) trying to make a push for one last massive payday, are using traditional performance enhancing drugs.

However, HGH, which has been known since the 1970s to be correlated with head size, is only tested for during the season, and the chemistry presumably continues to evolve to allow players to stay one step ahead of testing. Even if the tests can be beat, though, there's no hiding the unnatural physical changes of the head and neck... that is, unless the players can come up with some other means of distracting from their swollen facial features.

Enter 2010 Brian Wilson. The above-average reliever turned MVP candidate and postseason hero ushered in a new trend of players growing excessively large beards, and passing it off as sheer goofiness. "Fear the Beard" became a regular chant at AT&T park, while fake beards were popular giveaways. His appearance was made all the more extreme with the beard's sleek black dyed color and his bizarre public persona. But perhaps Brian Wilson ushered in more than just new fashion trend, and instead gave major league players a way of covering up any unnatural increases in head and neck size as a consequence of HGH use. Which in Wilson's case earned him that massive pay increase (over $40MM from 2010-2015) that was undeniably worth the risk of a potential tarnished reputation.

With so much money involved, major league baseball players surely have the means to beat a drug test. But thanks to Brian Wilson's ingenuity, players can also conceal the unintended side effects of performance enhancing drug use. And ultimately, what's the risk? If a player is a borderline major leaguer to begin with, multiple years into their career but at risk of missing out on a second long-term contract due to persistent mediocrity, they are not going to be a hall of famer anyway. The worst case scenario for these players is a tarnished reputation and brief stretch of boos from opposing team's fans until their misdeeds are forgotten a few years later (see: Starling Marte and Dee Gordon). And the best case scenario? How about an extra $100 million, as "Roidbeard" case study number 2, Charlie Blackmon, has recently learned. And sure enough, his transition from mediocre outfield to perennial all-star and MVP candidate coincided perfectly with his growth of a monstrous, disgusting beard.

Every year, it seems like a relief pitcher that nobody's ever heard of shows up to the majors with a gigantic beard and an uncannily easy ability to hit 100mph on the gun with every fastball. Or maybe a former apparent first round bust returns from multiple years of injuries and trips to the minors to become the best reliever in baseball. Or a supposed power hitter with so little to contribute that nobody will even sign him disappears to Korea for a few years, only to return and crush huge home runs with great ease. Or a good but not great veteran with no risk to tarnish a hall-of-fame reputation suddenly goes from defensive wizard to offensive stud towards the end of his career.

Justin Turner was shaping up to be a classic, average MLB player, working himself into an every day role but not with enough sustained excellence to guarantee a lifetime's worth of money from a single contract. He bounced around a bit during his first four years before settling with the Dodgers, not coincidentally during the same year that our old friend Brian Wilson was wrapping up his career. Wilson clearly introduced Turner to the ways of the Roidbeard, just in time to save his career and give him this unnatural trajectory of becoming an orders of magnitude better player as he entered his 30s:

Sure enough, Turner muscled out a roidbeard, got a massive contract extension after the 2016 season, and became one of the best players in the league in 2017, with an incredible amount of facial hair arriving in unison with the disappearance of hair from the top of his head:

 
                              

Charlie Blackmon's substantial new contract from the Rockies certainly won't be the last for a player in their 30s who miraculously went from average to all-star in their 30s, perfectly coinciding with their growth of what I henceforth deem the Roidbeard.