Baseball loves culture and tradition. Even deadly ones. Anybody want a pinch between the cheek and gum?
The temptation has been strong, from advertisements for tobacco in baseball cards decades ago to the glorified moment of New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth accepting a plug of chew from his girlfriend before a climactic game-winning hit in the 1927 movie Babe Comes Home.
What movies rarely document is the dark side: Tony Gwynn, one of the greats on and off the field, dying at 54 after a long fight with mouth cancer. The disfigured face of former big-leaguer Bill Tuttle, who died at 69, ravaged from chewing tobacco for almost 40 years. Chewing tobacco cripples, kills and should be banned from Major League Baseball.
We shouldn't be having this conversation, but the Players Association has held firm, playing an obstinate tug-of-war game with facts and public pressure. Although chewing tobacco has been banned in the minor leagues since 1993, it's still a perk once you become a big-leaguer.
An estimated 25-30 percent of MLB players are blissfully chewing smokeless tobacco, turning their backs on the ninny state of government overreach trying to deprive them of their right to kill themselves.
I get it. To a point. Once upon a time, in 1936, Life magazine captured Lou Gehrig smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer in the dugout. There's another famous shot of former Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson smoking on the sidelines--and enjoying a cool Fresca--during the first Super Bowl in 1967.
But society evolves. And even though there are no issues of second-hand smoke impacting others, chewing tobacco sends a sad and sick message to every aspiring Little Leaguer who wants to grow up and join the Bigs.
You too can be like Tony Gwynn. Dead at 54.
But give the sport props for heading in the right direction. Restrictions are now in place in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement that prohibits carrying tobacco cans and pouches onto the field when fans are in the stands, and bans the product during television interviews and at team functions.
Even more restrictive are laws that have passed outlawing smokeless tobacco in public stadiums. That includes New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Assuming pending legislation is passed, 40 percent of MLB stadiums will be tobacco-free by 2017.
"We have, I hope, have made clear our position with respect to smokeless tobacco," MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said during opening day. "It's been banned in the minor leagues for a very long time. We have, in each of the last two rounds of bargaining, made proposals designed to limit the use of smokeless tobacco on the field or eliminate it. I suspect it will be a bargaining topic for us going forward."
"It's an individual choice," Curt Schilling told me back in 2005, "and one that a lot of people make poorly." Nothing has changed 11 years later.
Editorial on 04/09/2016