If You Must Smoke, Try It in Singapore

Marge Schott, the Cincinnati Red menace, recently threatened to defy a city crackdown on smoking at the stadium. She intended to sit there in her owner’s box and puff away to her heart’s content, if not her lungs’. Between the souvenirs left on the field by Schott’s dog and the aroma from her cigarettes, the Reds could become the first team in baseball history to play with clothespins on their noses.

I have three suggestions on how to treat people who smoke at a baseball game:

1. Evict them from the park.

2. Arrest them.

3. Send them to Singapore to be caned.

Baseball is a game stained by tobacco, from the toxic drool spilling down Lenny Dykstra’s jaw to the seventh-inning smokes occasionally sneaked by Pittsburgh Manager Jim Leyland, much the way Baltimore’s human chimney, Earl Weaver once did. Ballplayers dip it, sniff it, smoke it, chomp it, spit it and even wrap bubble gum around it like a burrito, if you can imagine that.

One difference, though.

You don’t have to sit next to the players.

Their tobacco doesn’t make you cough. Their nicotine doesn’t end up contaminating your clothes. Their use of proven carcinogens might be a poor influence for children and more than a tad disgusting, but at least they stay far enough away that it doesn’t directly affect your enjoyment of the game.

Some parks don’t need Helmet Night or Camera Night, though.

They need Oxygen Mask Night.

It has been a while, but I have been in the stands of a baseball game when the guy seated next to me put a match to a cigar the size of Benny Goodman’s clarinet. Back when thousands smoked, no single offender presented a problem. Nowadays, though, you can tell if somebody has lit up seven rows away. The smoke comes blowing at you like a backdraft from a Ron Howard film. If the vendor sold marshmallows, you could toast them.

Somewhere else, you could change your seat. But not with a specific ticket. Seated beside certain companions, you could appeal to the smoker to desist out of friendship. With a stranger, though, your options are greatly reduced.

You can ask the person to extinguish the smoke, thereby risking a nasty argument and possibly being clubbed with a souvenir bobbing-head doll. Or, you can tattle to an usher, which endears you to nobody and makes you feel like a little rat.

This also complicates the life of the usher, who already has enough trouble hopping around like a bullfrog from aisle to aisle trying to intercept all those beach balls.

Oh, and imagine sicking an usher on Marge Schott.

“That woman’s cigarette is bothering me.”

“Which woman?”

“That one. Right there.”

“Uh, I don’t see any woman.”

Seeing as how she is the head Red, nobody short of the fire marshal is going to have the guts to tell Marge Schott to get her ash out of there. Luckily for the health and welfare of Ohioans who adore baseball but aren’t all that wild about cancer, last week Schott reluctantly agreed to trudge upstairs to her private humidor whenever she feels the need for a few drags. Much obliged, Marge. Smoke ‘em in good health.

Baseball is doing better. Most parks have specified smoking areas, or no smoking at all. The minor leagues are even more strict, even recently scolding Birmingham outfielder Michael Jordan for being spotted inside the dugout with a cigar. They don’t want to see anything hanging from Mike’s mouth but his tongue.

If, by chance, you ever do sit next to smokers at a baseball game, here are a few tricks you can use to fight back:

--Take off your shoes. Fight fumes with fumes.

--Talk about Tom and Roseanne Arnold. They will get bored and change their seats.

--Pretend this is your first game. Ask dozens of dumb questions. “How can he throw a knuckleball with his knuckles?” “Are any of these guys Reggie?”

--Put things on your hot dog that will gross them out.

--Blow really big bubbles. If necessary, use gum.

--Discuss all the great Texas Ranger games in baseball history.

--Pay a cute child to approach the smoker and say, “Lady, is it true your lungs are purple?”