The Boston Red Sox are going to the American League Championship Series — and so, too, are their beards.
Most members of the team sprouted beards on a whim this year, turning an impromptu idea into a bizarre bonding exercise that has come to define the team and its season. The beards grew longer and weirder as the year wore on, with some going where beards have never gone before.
Here, a sampling of the best beards:
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Description: Untamed, free-flowing. Functions as both a duck blind and natural duck habitat.
Jonny Gomes
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Beard Style: Dueling Muttonchops
Description: Each follicle is an accomplished banjo player. Occasionally sneaks away to drink whiskey by moonlight on a pond somewhere deep in Appalachia.
Description: Business in the front, party on the sides. Looks worse the longer it grows. Cannot be paired with shirtsleeves.
Shane Victorino
Beard Style: Hawaiian Gerrymander
Description: Random, snaking tendrils. Designed to maximize weight of the chin while minimizing heft of the cheeks. May have caused government shutdown.
David Ross
Beard Style: Old Man in the Mountchin
Description: Steel wool dipped in house paint. Also known as "Ol' Skunktail."
Ryan Dempster
Beard Style: The Craig Breslow
Description: Neat, close-shorn. Most commonly found on: New dads, Just For Men models, Craig Breslows.
Craig Breslow
Beard Style: The Ryan Dempster
Description: Neat, close-shorn. Most commonly found on: Brooklyn faux intellectuals, JCPenney's catalog models, Ryan Dempsters.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia
Beard Style: The Interrobang
Description: Like his name, the beard is both a question and an exclamation.
Mike Carp
Beard Style: The Ahab
Description: Scraggly, sea-faring. Maddeningly fixated on the whale — the whale! The damn, white whale!
David Ortiz
Beard Style: The Tetris
Description: Fastidiously geometric, high-scoring. Grows increasingly faster as season progresses. Rumored cheat codes never proven true.
Stephen Drew
Beard Style: The Goldilocks
Description: Not too long, not too short. Not too neat, not too shaggy. Affinity for porridge, naps, bears.
Will Middlebrooks
Beard Style: The Nothing to See Here
Description: Standard scruff. Doubles as medium grit (P60-80) sandpaper. Variation on "The Meh Cop."
Clay Buchholz
Beard Style: The Wooly Willy
Description: Patchy,magnetized. Shaving requires no razor, only a brisk shake or small polarized wand.
Jon Lester
Beard Style: The Dirty Lincoln
Description: Chinstrap gone awry. Brilliant orator of uncouth tales. Enjoys disrupting operas with armpit farts.
Jacoby Ellsbury
Beard Style: The Best Supporting Actor
Description: Adds seriousness to the baby-faced. Known to coo, "Hey, girl," at passersby. Had a cameo in Argo.
Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, RawStory, and Business Insider.
