Something to Chew On : Tobacco Ban Prompts Reflection of Role Models

Baseball’s a game of pauses, stretches of quiet or tension perhaps punctuated by a beery fan’s jibe at the ump or a vendor’s cry. Up in the stands, during these lags, a kid might punch the glove he brought to catch a foul. He might crack a peanut shell.

Down in the dugout, players might grab a chew to expend nervous energy, especially when there’s a pennant race going on, as in this night’s game between the Winston-Salem Spirits and the Kinston Indians, both hoping for the Class A Carolina League crown.

If they chew, it’s gum or sunflower seeds now. Tobacco is banned in the minor leagues, and there’s a hefty fine.

If players chitchat in the pauses between pitches, the subject these days may be that tough new rule, how guys are coping with it -- but more than that, whether it’s fair, whether it’s “American,” who has what rights, and how far being a role model for kids really goes.

In parks like Winston-Salem’s, baseball’s tobacco ban itself has become something to chew on.

“Tobacco was always part of baseball,” said Eric Owens, shortstop for the Spirits, a farm team of the Cincinnati Reds. Owens, who grew up in Virginia tobacco country, expects a $100 fine -- about half his weekly net pay -- after his “dip can” was spotted during a recent locker room search.

“This is supposed to be a free country,” he said. “They can almost come and look in your wallet.”

Regardless of that, he said, the ban makes no sense in a game where tobacco companies used to issue kids’ trading cards and delivered cases of free chews to clubs, and where a chaw-packed cheek remains an iconic image.

“That’s like taking Don Mattingly and Wade Boggs -- and Joe DiMaggio! -- out of the game,” said Owens, who on a 3-2 pitch in the second inning pounded a grand slam over an outfield fence lined with cigarette, beer and other billboards.

Given such advertising, the tobacco ban seems ironic to many players. It’s also inconsistent, they say, because major leaguers who have greater influence on children but are protected by a powerful union can chew with impunity, even on network television.

“All you hear is grumbling,” said Greg Booker, chewing peanuts across the field at the Indians’ dugout.

When the ban was imposed June 15, Major League Baseball officials gave as reasons players’ health and their status as role models for young fans. Federal studies have shown a sharp increase in young men’s use of snuff and chewing tobacco, which research has linked to disease.

Major league officials will not say how many players have been fined for violations but believe the ban is working, said Richard Levin, a spokesman in New York. “We do send people around” to monitor compliance, but penalties only come after violations in plain sight, he said.

For many players, breaking the old habit is hard and makes them irritable.

“I tried to quit for about two weeks, and I got in fights with my wife,” said Troy Buckley, a catcher for the Spirits who started using tobacco when he entered pro baseball’s instructional league four years ago.

When the season’s over, he’ll try again to quit. “I know it’s bad for me,” he said behind iridescent sunglasses, his cap turned backward.

The ban has made ballplayers rethink being a role model.

Buckley said it only reinforced his feelings. Back when he carried a snuff can in his uniform pocket and a young fan would ask his brand, he’d pretend not to hear. “I wouldn’t answer them,” he said. “I don’t want them to start.”

His teammate, third baseman Bobby Perna, holds baseball skills clinics for kids and notices how they regard players: “You walk up to ‘em and see their eyes getting bright. ... You’d be surprised how much kids listen.”

While urging young fans to avoid bad habits, Perna considers tobacco chewing “my right” and sees no inconsistency. “I always believed that if you forced a kid -- ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’ -- they’re going to find a way to do it anyway. You’ve got to build trust.”

Chewed-and-spit-out sunflower seeds line the dust along the baselines and the concrete dugout floors.

On the Indians’ bench, coach Danny Norman, spitting seeds as he tries to break his tobacco habit, said that in an off-season trucking job, “they don’t care what you look like, what you wear, as long as you make that freight.” But put on a baseball uniform and, yes, you’re something different.

“We as American people, we’re the ones who put the athletes on a pedestal rather than the police officer or the doctor,” Norman said. “It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the way it is.”

What bothers him is the disparity that the tobacco ban reveals between non-union minor league players and those in the majors, where he spent five years.

“Baseball’s like a fraternity, what’s good for one is good for all,” he said. “The pitcher’s mound is 60 feet, six inches away, the bases are 90 feet. Except, we take bus rides and they fly.” And big leaguers cannot be told what to chew.

Sitting next to him, manager Dave Keller said he only disagreed with the midseason timing of the ban, a high-pressure time to try to quit.

Whether the ban is right or not, he hopes it teaches responsibility toward the fans, self-discipline, and the need to put out your best effort whatever the conditions -- all notions his staff tries to instill in their young players, most in their early 20s.

“Not to be real philosophical, but that’s life,” he said. Those lessons learned, he added, “The well will never run dry.

“This game is different from all the others. Nobody really knows how to explain it. There’s a lot of kid in this. But there’s a time when you’ve got to be a man.”

It’s a perfect baseball evening: cool with a light breeze; there are roars for bang-bang double plays; cheers for heroes with nicknames like Motorboat Jones; a laughable razz (“Hey, this ain’t cricket!”) when the opposing pitcher throws in the dirt.

In the stands, Dave Stombaugh and his two sons all brought their gloves. When asked about tobacco chewing, 7-year-old Brad tugs his cheek, as if filled with a chaw, to show he understands, then says it doesn’t matter what players chew.

But his father endorsed the tobacco ban, citing players’ subtle influence on kids. “I know they look up to them,” he said.

Another father, Ricky Miller, arms and hands loaded with popcorn and Cokes as he steered his two young sons back from the concession stand, discounted that influence.

Though he uses neither tobacco nor alcohol, Miller nodded across the field and said, “I’d rather my boys’d see a Red Man (chewing tobacco) emblem than see beer ads out there.”

He worked on tobacco farms while in school and his wife grew up on one.

Maybe old ways change a little more slowly in tobacco country. One still sees Mail Pouch signs on weather-beaten barns. And Winston-Salem’s leading manufacturing employer is still R.J. Reynolds.

In fact, the company’s cigarette-making complex looms over the center-field wall as the Spirits play without their plugs.

“You smell the tobacco on the breeze,” said Perna, the third baseman. “That’s when I get the itch.”