Yankees Give Mattingly Unkind Cut

The boss, who hadn’t seen me for a while, took one look and said: “Get a haircut.” I said: “OK. Which hair?”

I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.

Turns out he has been following this nonsense out of New York. A knucklehead who works in the Yankees’ front office--this might be redundant--recently ordered several of his professional baseball players to have their hair trimmed, including Don Mattingly, who is 30 years old and probably the team’s best player.

Now, personally, I haven’t heard anything this ludicrous since the owner of the Cincinnati Reds gave the run of the ballpark to her dog, the late Schottzie, who recently was buried wearing a Cincinnati cap.

This woman is either an animal lover or completely dotty, take your pick, but I always feared that someday she would throw a baseball and then tell one of her ballplayers: “Fetch!”

But Marge Schott has nothing on Gene Michael, the man behind this Yankee-clipper business.

Michael is the sort of guy who would have made Babe Ruth do aerobics. As chief adviser to Abraham Lincoln, he would have said: “Hey, Abe! Hey, stretch! Here’s two bucks. Run out and get yourself some Gillette disposables, fur ball.”

Michael is one of those adults who tells younger adults to behave like adults, then treats them like children. He should coach college football.

Don Mattingly needs a haircut about as much as Oliver North does. I know Hare Krishnas with longer hair. The vice president of the United States is shaggier than Mattingly is. Michael’s own hair was longer than Mattingly in his playing days, as his 1973 bubble-gum card reveals.

But clean Gene wants those Yankee skulls smooth as horsehide.

My boss agrees: “And take a shave,” he says. “And you could use a bath. And I know a good plastic surgeon if you want to take care of some of those other things.”

I never realized that what’s been wrong with the Yankees all these years was that if you don’t look sharp or feel sharp, you can’t be sharp.

Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I could have sworn that Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson hit the ball a country mile looking like country musicians.

The current Yankees are the only team in baseball with a bullpen coach who studied with Vidal Sassoon. If the new, nicer-looking Yankees do well enough, their postgame rubdowns will include samples from a fine line of Estee Lauder products, plus potential endorsement deals with Coco Chanel for “Mattingly: Parfum de Men.”

I remember when the only barber any New York baseball lover cared about was Red.

Last I heard, Mattingly got the haircut. The Yankees proved they meant business by benching Mattingly until he did. If he gets grass stains on his uniform, they intend to send Don to his room without supper.

All I know is, the old barbershop expression “a little off at the top” applies to the Yankees’ front office. As usual.

I mean, is baseball a silly game or what? The Yankees want their players to look nice so they can go out there and play in the dirt.

Mattingly prefers to work somewhere where he would get treated more like a human being--you know, like the Marines. So far, the team has been suspiciously quiet about his mustache. As we all know, people with mustaches look sinister, including an old aunt of mine.

Gene Michael is a strange guy. He would have fined Schottzie for licking his face.

There are players on baseball diamonds wearing diamond earrings and spiked hair and handlebar mustaches and lightning bolts carved into their scalps. I’v seen faces out there that would have scared Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Look, it’s nice to look nice. I know some teams prefer their players to wear jackets and ties on trips. The Dodgers, Reds and others aren’t wild about whiskers. On the other hand, there are teams like the Angels or Cubs who ought to sign cone-domed pinheads from from the circus if they can hit a curve.

My boss says: “It wouldn’t kill you to get a haircut. You look like one of those Beatles.” My boss is an older dude.

I tell him: “Hey, Superman didn’t need no haircut.”

He tells me: “Hey, Superman couldn’t get no haircut.”