CHICAGO -- Amid a pressure-filled pennant race and after five months of baseball, Chicago White Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis felt his teammates needed to find a way to relax a bit.

His suggestion? Mustaches.

Beginning on Monday and with an end date undetermined, a majority of the White Sox have followed Youkilis’ example and turned the clubhouse into your ordinary state police department with dozens of mustaches on display.

“I came up with it about a month ago, but no one got to it,” Youkilis said. “Finally I just did it, and the guys jumped onboard. “

White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko likes the idea to change things up a bit as they try to hold off the Detroit Tigers for the American League Central title.

“Guys are having fun with it right now,” Konerko said. “This time of year you kind of have to have some goofiness to get through it. It becomes a grind. We've been going at this for 6 1/2 months now from spring training. It gave everybody some life (in Monday’s win.) We're 1-0, so we'll ride it out and see what happens.”


Konerko admits his family isn’t exactly fond of his mustache.

“Not really,” Konerko said laughing. “No one's really OK with that outside of the clubhouse.”
White Sox designated hitter Adam Dunn was also skeptical. He describes himself looking “like a character from Boogie Nights.”

“I don’t know, man,” Dunn said. “I don’t know about this moustache thing. … (Youkilis) comes up with a bunch of stuff. This is one of his 50 things he wants to do every day. Anything he can do to cover up his face is perfect.

“He always wants to do some kind of weird stuff. If he wants to shave heads, that’s where I draw the line. The moustache, whatever, all right, cool. I’m not shaving heads. I’ll tell you that much.”
Youkilis downplayed how much he wanted his teammates to do, but he pointed to the success of the mustaches so far.

“Well, if something works, you’re not going to be against it,” Youkilis said. “I guess it’s technically a superstition. It got us a win last night, so hopefully it’ll get us a bunch more wins. Twenty-eight more games left, hopefully we win them.”

White Sox manager Robin Ventura said the players tried to persuade him and the coaches to join in, but he doesn’t plan on it, although he thinks the players should enjoy it.

“Yeah, it’s fun,” Ventura said. “That stuff’s fun. They’re just trying to get the coaches to do it. I think it’s more of a player thing. They can have it.”