Brett Myers: Greatest Hits

In following the Brett Myers story, I have noticed that in the photos accompanying each article, Brett’s facial hair is slightly different. And yet each arrangement is equally unfortunate. Fellow UmpBumper Coley Ward, who as a lifelong Phillies fan has had Myers on his radar screen for quite some time, confirmed that Myers has a long track record of Unfortunate Facial Hair, with a rap sheet including aggravated mustaches, intent-to-distribute soul patches, and 1st-degree goatees.

In this official photo, Myers has taken special care to sculpt the hair around his chin into a donut shape (note the slight bald patch in the middle of the goatee). A hint of mustache grazes his upper lip, though it’s so sparse one wonders whether it could possibly be intentional. It has that oops-just-missed-a-spot look to it, and yet…and yet…with the smooth cheeks to either side, one can only conclude that Myers made a conscious decision to leave the lip fuzz intact. It’s a pity. Aside from the half-mast ’stache, the goatee is not too bad, as far as goatees are concerned. Well. Except for that donut-hole thing of course. Take a last look, UmpBumpers. This is as good as it gets.

While still suspiciously fuzzy, the careful observer will note that, in this side view, the upper lip has been more closely shorn. Intead of a goatee, Myers has cultivated a double-decker soul-patch-plus-chin-cap: two terrible hair ideas composed together on one facial canvas! The soul patch is becoming increasingly popular on the baseball diamonds of today. Why do so many ballplayers want to look like second-rate saxaphonists? Is playing major league ball not enough? The “chin cap,” too, seems ever more popular. Unattached to anything, floating there at the bottom of the face, it reminds me of nothing so much as a hairy antarctic ice cap. However, the worst is yet to come.

In these two shots, the shadow-stache and sole-patch have been removed entirely. And yet, I’m sure the candid viewer would agree, the result is hardly an inprovement:

Whether the Van Dyck-style billy goat beard is shaped into a Satanic point (above right) or given the slightly more rounded tip of a tongue depressor, either way the aesthetic results are not ocularly pleasing.

And yet, neither is the apparent inverse of the above composition (right). Full ’stache, and a thin outline of goatee. It makes his chin look like a tiny block of advertising space. I expect to see “Your ad here” in wee little letters stamped below his lip. Perhaps, given the extreme close-ups favored by today’s baseball cameramen, this was indeed his hope. I wonder how much you’d have to pay to get the Ford logo on a pitcher’s chin for a few innings?

There you have it, sportsfans. Brett Myers: The UFH Retrospective.

Sorry about your retinas. I should have warned you.