Baseball's Spring Training is a time for optimism. We Phillies fans are living in a Golden Age - four consecutive divisional championships, one World Series win, a seemingly invincible 2011 pitching staff. It's all good.
Or is it? Word from Florida is that Chase Utley might be headed for knee surgery. The Phillies without Chase Utley just won't be the same. His hits, home runs, and RBIs can possibly be replaced, but I will mostly miss his sideburns.
We all know that baseball players are hairstyle trend-setters. Bake McBride of the Phillies had one of the the first Afros back in the 70s. Al Hrabosky and Goose Gossage began the Fu Manchu mustache trend in the same era. Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski both adopted the fortunately short-lived male perm white guy Afro look. The Yankees' Thurman Munson was the first to sport mutton chop sideburns.
It's a new decade and it calls for a new hairstyle. The military crew cut is on its way out and the Justin Bieber front sweep hopefully will never catch on. I was really hoping that mutton chop sideburns would be the wave of the 2010s. Chase Utley was leading the charge. Over the past few years, Chase's sideburns worked their way down his cheeks. Surely, 2011 would see full-blown mutton chops on the Phillies second baseman.
The best part was that I can finally be in style. Back when Thurman Munson had his mutton chops, I was too young to grow good ones. My sideburns back then were sparse and oddly-colored. Forty years later, I can't grow hair on the top of my head but it sprouts thick and rich on my face. I could look just like All-Star Chase Utley.
The problem is that a successful hairstyle, one that I can retain despite the protests of family members, has to start with a famous ballplayer. If Chase Utley can't appear on TV every night between now and October, the Mutton Chop Revolution will stop in its tracks.
Chase, rehab that knee! I've been waiting forty years to be in style.
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