Our weekly dispatch from the nation's foremost mustache expert.

Collin BalesterDespite not being a finalist for the "Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year"-award, in the Mustached American community, Collin Balester is a hero.

The Washington Nationals relief pitcher has withstood the pressures from agents, the Major League Baseball Players Association, the United Midgets Rights Union and his seemingly mustache-friendly wife Ashley to remove his lower-nose ruffage for several years.

He lost endorsement deals with Gillette and Summer's Eve feminine hygiene products. The Nationals went so far as to remove nearly every in-uniform mustached photo of Balester from his website.

All along, he has stood up to the negativity, tyranny and intellectually inferior clean-shaven aristocracy of Major League Baseball.


"I'll only pitch as well as my mustache allows me to," he recently told us. "I am my mustache, and my mustache is what I am."

Indeed, but now Balester has joined the American Mustache Institute -- he'll be its Southern California bureau chief (he lives in Dana Point in the off-season) -- in shaving clean for Movember and starting anew.

He's now challenging other major leaguers to join his "Bally's 'Staches" Movember team and help contribute to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG.

He asks that any citizen within earshot of a major league player who does not suffer from Bare Upper Lip Disorder (or BULD), walk up to them and state the following lines:

Grow a 'stache for Movember;
You'll not regret it;
Join Bally's 'Staches or die.

In the end, Balester said, he hopes to parade his newly minted, partially unvarnished lip propeller at 'Stache Bash 2010 in St. Louis on Dec. 4.


For Dr. Abraham J. Froman's mustache perspective, check in every Wednesday on Asylum.