There was no hairy situation on this Yankees-Guardians broadcast.
Nate Rosenhaus, the long-haired bat boy on loan from the Guardians in the visitor’s dugout at Cleveland’s Progressive Field, was back in Yankees gear Saturday for Game 1 of a doubleheader, a 3-2 Bronx Bombers win.
One year ago, Yankees television announcer Michael Kay called out Rosenhaus for having a mustache and hair that ended beneath his shoulders.
It would have been against the Yankees’ “Neatness Counts” hair policy for players and coaches instituted in 1976, as Kay pointed out.
John Flaherty, who was filling in Saturday for Kay as the play-by-play voice, seemingly ignored Rosenhaus before the game when YES Network’s camera zoomed in on him.
Perhaps he didn’t remember him — or perhaps he was just steering clear of the type of controversy that followed Kay.
doubleheader.
YES Network published the video on Instagram with the caption, “LOOK who has RETURNED!”
“Strange to see a Yankee uniform, somebody wearing that uniform with that sort of hair,” Kay said at the time. “If the players aren’t allowed, I don’t know if the bat boy should be allowed. There are rules. Rules are rules. He’s disobeying two of them. I think there’s facial hair, and, obviously, the hair is below the collar.”
Kay later said he and Rosenhaus had a good laugh about the hubbub created.
Rosenhaus tucked his hair into his helmet for the next game, and Kay blamed people for overreacting.
“This is really an awful time. It’s an awful time,” he said on his ESPN radio show. “It’s an awful time in our history as a planet, it really is, and as a human race. Everybody sucks. I’m telling you, they really do. To dig into something like that and say I attacked someone. I didn’t attack anybody!”
The hair was back in all its glorious flow Saturday — covering up the “s” in “Yankees” on Rosenhaus’ hoodie.
