Beards Part 2 - Yes there are more

Yesterday I asked the question "Are there more beards in baseball". Then I showed a bunch of baseball players wearing beards on 2015 baseball cards. That didn't really answer the question however. The answer is yes, there are more beard wearing players in baseball than ever, at least according to the evidence presented in baseball cards. Here's the data.

Total players is the number of different players from each year I had scanned cards for. I think we can safely extrapolate this into the future and say by 2030, every player will have a beard.  Let's look at some bearded players from past years.

1990

Most beards in the past seemed to me smaller and neater than today. Sure you had your full beards but they tended to look more like this.

And you had your Jeff Reardons

But beards tended to lean more toward goatees.

1995

The hair might be long and scraggly but beards were still mostly limited to goatees.

With the occasional mountain man.

2000

Again, goatees predominate

I'm not sure what look Klesko was going for here. Some sort of muttonchops/goatee combo.

But I think Jeff Bagwell pretty much had the worst beard of the year.

2005

Full beard but trim.

By 2005, even Junior was sporting a beard.

Of all the beards I looked at, I only found two examples of a pure chin strap beard. Here's one.

2010
Since I started blogging in 2008, I have a lot more cards scanned. That's why I have a lot larger sample size for 2010 and 2015.

Even in 2010, still mostly goatees.

2010 Topps 206 had lots of players posed in front of forest fires for some reason.

Here's the other chin strap beard from 2010.

From that simple chin strap grew a beard that threatens all of Werth's face.

Of course, baseball is just a microcosm of society as a whole. Here's a New York Post article from 2014 that explains that more men then ever have beards.