THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140401
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
It's not supposed to, but tobacco use continues inside minor league baseball clubhouses at Harbor Park and around the country. This is no large secret. Tobacco products have been banned in the minors for a few years now, but, behind closed doors, the occasional cigarette is still dragged and snuff is still tucked into lower lips.
Today, though, we can only hope that there are fewer minor leaguers spitting clandestinely into cups than there were last week, before the news broke of veteran outfielder Brett Butler's throat cancer.
Butler says he stopped dipping smokeless tobacco 15 years ago and has declined to directly link his condition with his use of the notorious leaf.
But because I think most people will make the inference, we also can hope that there will be a positive influence - enough, say, to make young people, and not just ballplayers, chuck their little cans of cut, scented tobacco once and for all.
The ban adopted by the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, governing body of the minors, was supposed to do that. It also was clearly a move to modernize and improve baseball's image in the eyes of impressionable young things.
On both counts, it's regarded as a success, though there are miles to go before the timeless association of baseball and tobacco is erased.
``I think it's been effective,'' says Randy Mobley, president of the International League. ``I'm not naive enough to think that it still doesn't happen in clubhouses. ... but I think there's a number of players who, as a result of the ban and other efforts to promote the downside of tobacco use, have chosen to rid themselves of that habit.''
The minor league ban prohibits tobacco use at the ballpark, on the field or off, with a penalty of $300 in Triple-A for a first offense. Umpires enforce the rule on the field, and managers are supposed to apply it off the field.
In addition, compliance people - ``spit cops,'' Tides general manager Dave Rosenfield calls them - from the commissioner's office make a couple unannounced walk-throughs per year to clubhouses and airport terminals to see what they can see. No digging through lockers or luggage allowed.
``If (the ban) makes it difficult for people to chew or dip, it's a step in the right direction,'' Rosenfield says. ``If it saves one life, or one face.
The devastation flesh cancer can cause is one of the horrors of the disease. Surgeries to cut away tumors leave victims without jaws, cheeks, tongues, etc. But short of parading every ballplayer through a cancer ward and shocking them into submission, there is not much more baseball can do than try to heighten awareness and nip young dippers before they start.
Naturally, the next high-profile major leaguer who shows up with mouth or throat cancer will offer another big boost.
``I don't think you could ever legislate it or ban it,'' former major leaguer Joe Garagiola told The New York Times. ``It's education.''
Garagiola is trying to take tobacco out of baseball, where, the Times says, 40 percent of professional players are users. And tobacco battlers face a huge challenge among the public at large. U.S. Department of Agriculture numbers indicate that chewing-tobacco use rose from 30 million pounds in 1981 to more than 50 million pounds in 1991.
The players' union, of course, makes a ban in the major leagues impossible, and televised games still bring images of cheeks and lips distended with tobacco.
At least in the minors, kids straining for autographs along the foul lines aren't sprayed with tobacco juice anymore. They have no reason to ask their parents what that little circular outline is showing through the back pocket of their favorite player.
Which is good, considering Butler says he quit dipping in the first place because a young fan told him he dipped because Butler dipped.
So don't go smokeless, you who are in search of a moist mouth and something to gnaw on before that crucial full-count pitch. Go one further. Go sugarless. by CNB