Major League Baseball strikes out chewing tobacco

America’s favorite pastime returned for another season April 5. The Major League Baseball (MLB) tradition, with peanuts and crackerjacks inseparably entwined with it, is as American as apple pie.

But when fans first passed through the turnstiles of Major League ballparks or tuned in to watch their favorite team early this season, they may have noticed the diminished visibility of something that has also been part of the baseball tradition since its earliest days — smokeless chewing tobacco.

For the first time in history, Major League ball clubs are playing ball with limits on the usage and visibility of smokeless tobacco on the field and in front of fans and cameras. As part of a five-year collective bargaining agreement reached in November between MLB and the players association, players, coaches, managers and other team personnel are no longer permitted to stash a can or package of smokeless tobacco in their back pockets or anywhere else in their uniforms when taking to the field or anytime fans are in the ballpark. Nor are they permitted to have a wad of smokeless chew — otherwise known as dip — tucked under their lip when signing autographs or participating in on-camera interviews or fan meet-and-greets.

The new restrictions are a positive step toward curtailing smokeless tobacco’s widespread and devastating impact on health: oral cancer, mouth lesions and gum disease, to name a few ailments caused by the products, which also have been linked to heart attacks and pancreatic cancer.

And with a 36 percent rise in the rate of smokeless tobacco use among high school boys since 2003, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new limits are a positive step toward reducing the damaging influence of smokeless tobacco.

The agreement, enthusiastically supported by baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, follows a concerted effort last year by Southern Baptists and other faith groups, along with numerous public health organizations, in calling for a complete ban on smokeless tobacco products in MLB.  

(BP)