Chaws of Death: The Spittin’ Image : Concerns Over Smokeless Tobacco Have Reached the Baseball World

Ned Bergert started using smokeless tobacco in the minor leagues. “It was a baseball thing, not a tobacco thing,” he says.

After all, a ballplayer spends an hour sitting around for every minute of action, and that gets boring. And how can you retaliate when a teammate spits on your shoes if you don’t have any ammunition?

It seemed safer than smoking, and Bergert continued the habit when he became a trainer for the Angels. Heck, the stuff was free for the taking in the clubhouse.

Then, one afternoon in 1985, he was mowing his lawn and his 3-year-old son, Chad, was following behind with his toy mower.

“I turned around and saw him spitting like I was,” Bergert recalls. “That started the wheels turning.”

A few days later, Bergert was a non-user. The incident with his son started him thinking, but the clincher was an article in Reader’s Digest about Sean Marsee, a 19-year-old from Oklahoma who had died of mouth cancer after having dipped snuff for nearly six years.

Now, Bergert speaks at high schools and to youth groups across the country on the evils of dipping and chewing.

“Just a pinch between the cheek and gum . . . tobacco you can enjoy without lighting up.”

--TV commercial starring Walt Garrison, former Dallas Cowboys running back and rodeo star.

There are three popular forms of smokeless tobacco:

--Loose leaf tobacco, typically sold in foil pouches. A golf-ball sized wad of this so-called chewing tobacco is stowed in the cheek, its juices mixing with the saliva of the user. Some users wrap chewed bubble gum around their “chaws,” forming “gumbacco.”

--Snuff, moist or dry powdered tobacco that usually comes in small round cans. “Dipping” snuff involves putting a pinch between the lip and lower gum.

--Plug tobacco, a compressed brick. The user breaks or bites off a chunk and uses it as he would chewing tobacco.

These practices aren’t new. Christopher Columbus’ crewmen had their first chews in October of 1492, compliments of the Caribbean natives. The use of powdered snuff as an inhalant was all the rage in the royal courts of Europe at one point, and the Congress had a communal snuff box and accompanying spittoons that remained until the mid-1930s.

Despite the mounting evidence that smokeless tobacco is at least as health-threatening as smoking tobacco, its use is increasing, especially among teen-age boys. Estimates of users in America range from 12 million to 20 million. Some surveys indicate that up to 17% of smokeless tobacco users are males between age 12 and 17.

Smokeless tobacco is especially popular among athletes. A recent study conducted by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. showed that although only 5% of the college athletes surveyed used cigarettes, 20% used smokeless tobacco.

“I tried it my first year in college and I liked it,” Jack Howell, the Angels’ third baseman, said. “I dipped for eight years before quitting last year.

“I could put in a dip in public and no one would know it. You could just swallow it, no big deal. It wasn’t like it was gross or anything. But I knew it wasn’t good for you and I was tired of feeling like I had to have it. I didn’t want a habit taking control of me.”

There was a time when ballplayers such as Garrison and Carlton Fisk sold smokeless tobacco on television. Every clubhouse in baseball had free samples of the stuff openly displayed.

But clubs are becoming more aware of the hazards--not to mention the possibility of lawsuits aimed at those who provide cancer-causing products free--and more than a dozen have stopped handing out smokeless tobacco.

In the spring of 1986, the Dodgers became the first team to stop distributing it. The Angels and 10 others stopped last year and more will follow suit this season.

Of course, players can afford to buy their own. So the 50% decline in users reported by most teams would seem to signal an increased awareness among the players.

“Two years ago, about 25 of our players were dipping or chewing,” Willie Thompson, clubhouse manager for the Chicago White Sox, said. “Now we’re down to eight or less.”

Every club has players in the process of quitting, thinking about quitting, or at least cutting down.

“It’s funny,” Angel pitcher Kirk McCaskill said. “I’m adamant against smoking, but I chewed for years. You rationalize. You say you can get cancer from diet soda. But I asked myself why I was doing it.

“And I know it made my teeth yellow.”

McCaskill said he has had just one chew--on the golf course--since last season.

“I think I’ve quit, but the real test will be when the season starts,” he said. “Games when I’m not pitching will be tough . . . “

“The scientific evidence is strong that the use of smokeless tobacco can cause cancer in humans.”

--From a 1986 report to the surgeon general on the consequences of using smokeless tobacco.

Dr. John Greene had contributed to that report and had listened to tobacco industry scientists claim that there was no such conclusive evidence.

“The report did show that we needed more data,” admitted Greene, dean of the School of Dentistry at the University of California at San Francisco. “I wanted to help provide it but didn’t know where to start.”

He got his answer while watching the 1986 World Series.

“I noticed all these players who were chewing and spitting,” he said. “I figured they’d probably been doing it for a while.”

Having found the perfect guinea pigs, Greene called Commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s office and got permission to give free dental exams and study the effects of smokeless tobacco on longtime users in the process. He also got a grant from the Institute of Health and this spring began a three-year study of seven major league teams that train in Arizona, including the Angels.

“We’re just getting started, but you can certainly see where they hold it in their mouth,” Greene said. “It can really cause changes in the mouth. In some, it stays like scar tissue. In others, it becomes malignant. We think there might be a viral co-factor, some link between a virus and oral cancer that could have real value in other cancer research, too.”

Angel reliever DeWayne Buice, a dedicated user of all forms of smokeless--and smoking--tobacco, had a bit of the inside of his cheek removed by Greene’s team and then had to see an oral surgeon the next day. A couple of other players also had tissue removed for biopsies.

“Those dentists aren’t the most popular guys in the clubhouse today,” Donnie Moore noted.

Just then, Buice walked into the clubhouse looking a bit worse for wear.

“Look at it this way,” trainer Rick Smith told him. “Better a piece of your cheek today than half your face sometime later.”

“Black Hairy Tongue”

“This is a particularly gross condition and while it is not cancerous, it is both ugly and devastating from a social standpoint. The stain, which resembles small, black hairs on the tongue, is caused by a combination of food, tobacco and germs.”

--From a poster on the wall of the Angels’ spring training clubhouse.

You should see the accompanying picture.

So what possesses young men to stuff wads of gooey ground-up leaves into their mouths?

In some parts of the country, the habit is passed down through the generations. One study of 112 Arkansas kindergartners revealed that 21% had used smokeless tobacco.

But the great majority of new users are teen-age boys who think that a round worn spot on the back of their jeans--produced by the ever-present can of snuff--is a symbol of virility, maturity and toughness.

Many get started on baseball diamonds, football fields or anywhere kids play sports. They have plenty of role models, especially pro baseball players.

“It’s a baseball tradition,” Angel pitcher Willie Fraser said. “I’m cutting down because I’m getting married, and it’s not good for you. But I’m not quitting.”

The reason people stay with the habit is simple. Smokeless tobacco gives a quicker nicotine buzz than cigarettes, and anyone who ever tried to quit smoking knows how addictive nicotine can be.

A dip of snuff delivers roughly the same amount of nicotine as a cigarette and 10 times the nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are the chief cancer-causing agents in smokeless tobacco.

Although federal law prohibits concentrations of these substances from exceeding 5 parts per billion in cured meats, levels in the five most popular brands of smokeless tobacco range from 9,600 to 289,000 parts per billion.

Smokeless tobacco has also been associated with increased risk of high blood pressure and recession of the gums.

Brian Harkins is 22. He started using snuff 9 years ago when he was playing in a league for 13-year-olds in Anaheim.

“Some guys don’t like it when they first try it, but I liked my first dip,” he said with a note of pride. “I didn’t dip in front of my mom for a long time, and when she found out, she hit the roof. I didn’t do it at home, but if she came to the park to see me play, well, that was my territory.

“As a kid, you see all these ballplayers doing it and you figure it can’t be that bad. I read the stuff, I know it’s not good for you, but I’m not going to quit now. I say, ‘To each his own.’ I don’t figure to be doing it forever.”

Sean Marsee didn’t figure he’d be doing it forever, either. Of course, he figured “forever” would be a little longer than 19 years.

After most of his tongue and jawbone had been removed and he had just discovered new lumps in his neck, just a few weeks before he died, Sean Marsee confessed to his mother that he still craved snuff.