Editor's note: the following letter to the editor was sent to the Detroit Free Press. 

Detroit Free Press,

It will forever remembered that September 24 was a dark day for Detroit's Mustached American population. As Lions President Matt Millen was ushered out, Tigers reliever Todd Jones announced his retirement effective at the end of this disappointing season.

And for Mustached Americans in Detroit and elsewhere, we must ask ourselves: What will be the next shoe to drop?

Indeed, will Tigers manager Jim Leyland and his lip sweater walk at season's end? Will we learn that the mustaches worn Jack Morris, Lance Parrish, Dan Petry, Kurt Gibson, Chet Lemon, Willie Hernandez and others during the 1984 Tigers championship season were fake? Will James Edwards' mustache fail to gain enough votes to garner entry into the Basketball Hall of Fame?

Yes, Tom Selleck is still on television - albeit not sporting his Tigers hat from "Magnum P.I."  But it is rare, outside of a mug shot, that popular media places a Mustached American on the front page of a newspaper or on television in a flattering light.

Sport, however, is the exception. In sports we have heroes such as Leyland, Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley,  Larry Bird, Lanny McDonald, and more.  

We at the American Mustache Institute, the ACLU of the Mustached American people, hope that one day we can live in a world where all men and women, are in fact, treated equally. But until that time comes, we will continue to battle the negative stereotyping that has accompanied the Mustached American since our cultural heyday in the 1970s.

So farewell to Millen and Jones. At least for some of us, they represented something bigger than the Lions or the Tigers. They represented the hopes and dreams of Mustached Americans everywhere.

Abraham Froman

Chief Executive Officer

The American Mustache Institute
www.AmericanMustacheInstitute.org
(877) STACHE-1
"...a mustache is a terrible thing to shave"