Wooten Snuffs Out a Habit

He hasn’t done well this season, and neither has his team, but it still will be a memorable one for the Angels’ Shawn Wooten. He swore off chewing tobacco, an enormously difficult habit to break when your workplace is a ballpark and the stuff is freely available.

He wanted to stop for years, he said, but his cravings got the better of him. In each spring training, players are reminded of the risks of chewing tobacco, the most serious of which is oral cancer that can require treatment that results in facial disfigurement.

Cancer runs in Wooten’s family, and the additional risk unsettled him. However, the fear of what might happen years or decades from now could not overcome his craving for chewing tobacco, nor his concern about the effects of withdrawal.

“That outweighed what would happen if I got cancer,” he said.

He caught flu three months ago and lost his desire for chewing tobacco. When he recovered, he decided to see whether he could continue to stay away from the stuff. It wasn’t easy, he said, but he made it to the end of the season, and he considers the habit kicked.

-- Bill Shaikin