In the dog days of summer, baseball players need to do things to keep the clubhouse loose.
Even if that means performing in front of 31,928 fans and thousands more on TV with the strangest beard imaginable.
That's exactly what A's starter Mike Fiers did Saturday night in Texas.
In case you missed it, Fiers was sporting a beard that looked like the letter "G."
While the beard might have gotten some laughs from his A's teammates and fans, it didn't help Fiers, who left the game in the second inning with right arm nerve irritation. He will undergo tests after experiencing numbness in his right hand.
After the A's 8-6 win over the Rangers, the beard was gone. Fiers met with the media in Arlington and he had shaved the "G" off his face.
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"I got hurt," Fiers said when asked why he shaved. "I can't continue that. Just had to shave that off. One-start thing."
As Fiers explained, the strange beard was conceived with the help of his teammates.
"Just being funny, having fun with these guys," Fiers told reporters. "It's a long season, we're in mid-September and just to give the guys a laugh, I'm kinda the guy they want to laugh at, so they dared me to do it or didn't think I'd go out and pitch with it. But I don't care."
Fiers and his teammates got their inspiration from exactly the place you would expect -- the internet.
"We were just looking up fun things to do because I was thinking about shaving my beard and starting fresh," Fiers said. "But we were thinking about something funny to do and we were searching on Google for funny beards and that was one of them that came up."
Fiers' beard might have been a laughing matter, but the numbness in his hand isn't.
Before he does any more funny stuff on the field, he needs to make sure he's healthy.
