01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Give me a head with hair.

Long, beautiful hair.

That's what this Red Sox team is becoming known for.

Hair.

Hair on heads.

Hair on chins.

Long, beautiful hair.

Johnny Damon's hair.

Pedro's hair.

Manny's hair.

Bronson Arroyo's hair.

Hair.

What is this, 1973?

It does all seem somewhat retro, this obsession with hair, this pre-occupation with appearance, as though the length of someone's hair means anything more than their hair is long. Or in this age where every other suburban girl seems to have a tattoo, and boys slouch around the mall looking like they're on the way to some prison reunion, doesn't it seem a little silly to get overly focused on the hair of professional athletes?

So what if Johnny Damon looks as if he's auditioning for some road show production of The Passion of the Christ?

"If this was Cub Scout Troop 14, I'd ask them to cut their hair," Terry Francona said before Sunday night's game. "It's not. We're trying to play the best baseball we can, and I think these guys have really come together as a ballclub. And if it's the hair thing or whatever, that's not important. The fact they came together is what's important."

Bingo.

This is not the Cub Scouts. This is not high school, where we like to think some life lessons are being learned as well as sports. This is not some downtown bank. This is professional sports, a world that can be as cruel as a loan shark's heart, a world that's very simple: either win or go home. For this is all about winning, nothing more. Not about being role models. Not necessarily about being good guys. None of that.

The other point?

There's no one way to win. The Yankees win with a traditional professionalism, complete with a ban on facial hair. The A's of the '70s looked like they were on their way to the countercultural Olympics, Animal House in cleats. The Patriots win with a high premium on discipline and an all-for-one philosophy. The Raiders won with football as individual expression. The Chicago Bulls won with Dennis Rodman, who sometimes had fuschia hair.

Which way is the right way?

It depends on who you ask.

But all those teams shared one thing: a common identity.

All good teams have an identity, and for much of the year this Red Sox team didn't seem to have one. Last year's "Cowboy Up" already seemed like some distant memory, something that could not be recaptured. The other day, Francona was saying how you can't force an identity on a team, how it either happens naturally or it doesn't happen at all. He also said how he wanted this team to latch on to its personality, even if he wasn't real sure there for a while what that was.

Because we all know the traditional rap on Red Sox teams, one that goes all the way back to Ted Williams. Twenty-five cabs for for 25 players. A clubhouse where everyone seemed to be spinning in his own orbit.

Now, that's different.

Damon was talking about that before Sunday's game, about how different the atmosphere around the team is than even two years ago when he first joined the Sox. How the first day he walked into the clubhouse he thought it was weird: no one playing cards. No one playing video games. Not too many people even talking. As if this team was a collection of disparate people who happened to share the same clubhouse through an accident of fate. And how the atmosphere got appreciably better last year, thanks primarily to Kevin Millar and Gabe Kapler, and how it keeps getting better.

"You know, more guys are feeling more comfortable and they're not afraid to step up and be a leader," said Damon. "I mean, our team, we have 25 players, we have about 25 leaders there, too. So whatever someone says, people listen."

A bit overstated, for sure.

But there's no question this team has found its identity, whether it's the self-imposed image of being "idiots," or the sense that this is a collection of free spirits. Players who, in Damon's words, "don't think," but simply go out and play this game they've played all their lives, this game that's taken them to where they are today.

And if it took long hair and a frat party atmosphere?

Given the Sox' 86-year drought, someone should have thought of it sooner.