A few weeks ago at a Port Angeles Roughriders baseball game, some girls from the softball team sat down next to me, and much like their male diamond counterparts, they started spitting sunflower seeds.
I had to laugh.
You go to any ballpark anywhere, you will find a mat of sunflower seeds shells in every dugout. I once had a terribly gross sunflower habit when I played ball. I kept spitting shells all the way through adult recreational slowpitch softball.
You could find sunflower seed shells in my house everywhere — hiding under the furniture, behind doors, under the dryer. They got everywhere. I finally gave up the habit and discovered in the process after a couple of weeks that I was sucking on so many seeds I had kind of lost much of sense of taste. Suddenly, I started to be able to taste food again.
And I wanted to say to those girls … keep spitting those seeds.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a gross habit. I definitely don’t recommend doing it on a first date or a job interview.
But, there’s a habit out there far, far worse. And that’s chewing tobacco.
Entrenched in baseball
This is an issue near and dear to my heart. I lost one parent to a tobacco-related disease when I was 15 and he was 49 and I have another parent battling COPD.
For some bizarre reason, I have honestly spent a lot of time and energy trying to track down why chewing tobacco is a huge part of baseball culture. A study released in 2014 by the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society estimated that as many as one-third of Major League ballplayers use chewing tobacco.
And those guys didn’t start chewing tobacco when they hit the majors. They started in high school. Or even younger.
By comparison, less than 10 percent of adult males chew tobacco. Baseball is out of whack with the rest of society. Chew has been a part of baseball culture going back literally 100-plus years. You can find all kinds of historic photos of baseball players with big ol’ wads of chew in their cheeks.
Babe Ruth? He chewed. He died in his early 50s of throat cancer.
Tony Gwynn chewed. He died in his early 50s of salivary gland cancer. There’s dozens of others through the history from George Case to Nellie Fox. All chewers. All died of cancer likely caused by their chewing. Curt Schilling chewed. He recently was forced to undergo chemotherapy for oral cancer. Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona chewed. Last year, he underwent heart surgery. Just the other day, I was watching an Indians game on TV and there was Francona spitting. Sunflower seeds.
Just recently, the city of Seattle banned chewing tobacco at Safeco Field. That not only means fans can’t chew in the park, the players aren’t even supposed to chew on the field or in the dugout. Seattle isn’t the first city to do this. Chew has been banned by everyone, even the players, in ballparks in Boston, New York, Chicago, Toronto, L.A. and San Francisco.
I know a lot of people hate these kinds of nanny state laws. I seriously doubt cops actually would write tickets to Mariners players for chewing. It’s mostly just trying to set an example.
The MLB is also phasing in a ban of chewing tobacco, similar to how the NHL is phasing in visors on helmets. New players are not allowed to chew. Players with MLB service before 2017 still can (just not in certain ballparks). Sort of a milquetoast policy, but I guess in the long run it will serve the purpose of getting chew off the field and out of sight. Out of sight of impressionable kids who might take up chewing because they see their favorite ballplayer chewing at the plate.
Cool kids smoked when I was in high school. Cool kids continued to smoke in high school well into the 1990s. Today, who really considers smoking cool anymore? Smoking has been all but banned in G and PG-13 movies even. Hardly any kids smoke cigarettes in this day and age (smoking rates among high school students are below 10 percent). More kids get their nicotine charge through vaping than through cigarettes.
The culture has been changed when it comes to cigarette. That battle is being slowly won. Chew remains stubbornly a part of baseball culture. The battle to change that culture is just taking off.
