New York Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner announced Friday that the team’s players and personnel will henceforth be permitted to wear “well-groomed beards.” So ends a silly, archaic tradition that was made up by his father, George Steinbrenner, shortly after an ownership group he led bought the team in 1973.

George Steinbrenner instituted the policy in 1976, three years after he bought the team, when the fashion of the era saw long hair and unkempt beards became commonplace. Steinbrenner, a former member of the U.S. Air Force, did not agree with the style of the times.