COMMENTARY : Baseball’s Ban on Tobacco Goes Too Far

A week ago Wednesday, the same day that Major League Baseball banned tobacco from the minor leagues, Jack Krol, the manager of the Louisville Redbirds, underwent surgery to have a cancerous growth removed from the side of his tongue. Doctors removed a little bit of his tongue, too.

Krol, 56, a former coach with the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Diego Padres was, like so many people in baseball, a chronic user of smokeless tobacco. Five years ago, Major League Baseball commissioned a survey that found that 38 percent of its players used smokeless tobacco. Toss in cigarettes, and baseball figures nearly half its players and coaches have a tobacco habit.

Citing interest in 1) its players’ health and 2) the sport’s image, baseball is seeking to greatly discourage, if not end, tobacco use in the minor leagues. As of Wednesday, any minor league player caught using tobacco anywhere in the ballpark or while his team is traveling will be fined $300 ($100 for rookie league and Class A players) and ejected from the game, along with his manager.

That is nothing to spit at.

They’re still spitting in the minor leagues, but these days, it’s nearly all gum and sunflower seeds. And they’re not happy about it.

“I think it’s a joke,” said Dan Raley, 27, a coach for the London Tigers in Ontario, where the New Britain Red Sox were playing when the ban began. “(Wednesday night), the first base umpire asked one of our players, Rick Sellers, if that was sunflower seeds he had in his mouth. He said yeah, and he spit ‘em out to show him. It’s ridiculous.”

It would seem so.

Baseball officials say that by penalizing tobacco use in the minor leagues, they’re hoping for a “trickle-up” effect that will eventually root out its use in the major leagues.

So why doesn’t baseball ban tobacco products in the majors? Because it can’t. Such a ban would have to be negotiated between the owners and the players union and included in the Basic Agreement. The current agreement expires at the end of this calendar year. What do you think the chances are that major league players will agree to such a ban? Less than zero.

Raley, who grew up in Virginia and said he has been using smokeless tobacco since he was 7 -- “I hung around and played with kids six or seven years older and they used it” -- speaks for the majority in griping about baseball’s hypocrisy.

“What really gets me is you can’t use substitute products,” he said. “There’s all kinds of (non-tobacco) products that help you quit. Gum causes tooth decay. Why don’t they ban that?”

To help players break the habit, baseball is offering counseling and free nicotine patches.

What it is not offering is a credible explanation for the ban -- beyond its own image-consciousness.

“Somewhere down the line,” said Major League Baseball publicist Jim Small, “baseball and smokeless tobacco have become intermixed. In the 1920s and ‘30s, many of the players coming to baseball were farmers. Many of them chewed tobacco. It became a baseball trait. We don’t buy that it’s a trait and a part of baseball lore. Smokeless tobacco is linked to mouth cancer. When you see these beautiful young kids who are deformed for the rest of their lives because their jaws have been removed or deformed, you can see (the ban) is the right thing to do.”

Sorry, baseball. This ban goes too far. True, I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life and I’d rather breathe oil fumes than somebody’s second-hand smoke. True, the Surgeon General has said that there is an undeniable link between second-hand smoke and cancer.

But Raley makes a good point when he says, “It’s not like there’s second-hand tobacco spit.”

“Chewing tobacco hurts the person that’s doing it, not the people around them,” said New Britain Red Sox relief pitcher Steve Mintz. “To me, that’s their choice.”

Or should be. As long as your chewing tobacco only threatens your health, what right do I have to force you to stop? Tobacco is a drug, and a harmful one, but it’s also a legal drug. Alcohol is a legal drug, too, and you don’t see baseball banning it.

“It’s very hypocritical,” Raley said, “when you see all the millions of dollars baseball makes off beer advertising.”

The difference between alcohol and chewing tobacco is that chewing tobacco is unsightly and messy, a bulge in your mouth, a paper cup to spit in lest you mess up the new clubhouse carpet. Alcohol isn’t nearly as messy, until, that is, it causes you to kill someone with your car, or abuse your spouse and children.

There aren’t any statistics on this, but wouldn’t you bet that baseball produces as many or more alcoholics than it does cancer-ridden tobacco users?

Who is expected to enforce this tobacco ban? Umpires. Managers. Club executives.

And secret agents. Small says that Major League Baseball is going to send out people to make surprise spot checks.

“Dip control officers,” Raley calls them.

“We’re not going to raid clubhouses and locker rooms and go into people’s lockers,” Major League Baseball spokesman Richard Levin said. “But we will be making visits.”

And hijacking teams on those eight-hour bus rides to make sure they’re complying? Sure.

Everyone not living in a cave in these United States has been made aware that cigarette smoking is a dangerous and addictive habit. But the message that smokeless tobacco can also be terribly harmful is just beginning to get out.

Small says that retired batting champion Rod Carew has spent more than $100,000 on dental work in an attempt to undo the damage of his smokeless tobacco habit. A Louisville Redbirds spokesman says that Krol is doing fine since his outpatient surgery and should be back at work next week, and able to speak.

May they all speak -- and be heard -- about the dangers of smokeless tobacco. But baseball should ease up on its ban. When a drug is legal, and an adult’s use of it threatens to harm only him, and nobody else, let him be. In this case it is baseball, not the user, that is overstepping its bounds.