baseball – Oral Cancer News

Padres Hall of Famer Randy Jones Battling Throat Cancer

Source: 10news.com Author: Mark Saunders Posted: Jan 26, 2017 SAN DIEGO - Legendary San Diego Padres pitcher Randy Jones is battling throat cancer, the team's website announced Thursday. Jones was reportedly diagnosed in November 2016 and has been undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments since December at Sharp's Hospital. "I feel positive," Jones said told the Padre's Bill Center. "They caught it early. It's all in the throat and not in the lymph nodes. I'm beating this thing." Jones said he used chewing tobacco as a player and has smoked cigars throughout his adult life. "I've completed 90 percent of my treatment," Jones told Center. He added that his physicians have said his cancer is linked to tobacco use. He also said his cancer is low-risk. Since his playing days he has remained heavily involved with the team. He is a spokesperson for the team and a local radio and television personality. The Friars drafted Jones in 1972, during the 5th round of the amateur draft. Jones pitched for the Padres from 1973-1980. He recorded a 3.42 ERA and 735 strikeouts through his career. He was the first Padre to win the National League Cy Young Award and the first Padre to start an All-Star Game. He was a National League all-star in 1975 and 1976, when he led the NL in ERA in 1975 and led in wins in 1976. Jones' number was retired by the team in 1997 and two years later, he was a member of the Padre's first Hall [...]

Charlotte Parker2017-01-26T13:50:37-07:00January, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

Tobacco is OUT! A third of all Major League Baseball stadiums to be free of tobacco

Source: www.dailyastorian.com Author: American Heart Association News With the end of this baseball season, so ended the long intertwined history of tobacco and baseball at more than one-third of all Major League stadiums. The unhealthy coupling started unraveling when it became evident that chewing tobacco resulted in deadly consequences for some players, such as legendary San Diego Padre Tony Gwynn who died of mouth cancer in 2014. Just months after Gwynn’s death, former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling announced he was being treated for oral cancer. Although Major League Baseball and the players’ union could not agree to take action, several cities have. Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco all have passed laws prohibiting tobacco use of any kind at sports venues. A statewide law in California will take effect before the 2017 season begins. This week, the Washington, D.C. City Council gave final approval to a measure that would end the use of all tobacco products – including smokeless tobacco like chew, dip and snuff – at all organized sporting events within the city, including Nationals Park. Councilmember Yvette Alexander said the move is needed to help protect children, who often look to sports professionals as role models, from taking up the habit. The measure will now be sent to Mayor Muriel Bowser to sign into law. Additionally, on Oct. 20, St. Petersburg, Florida, City Council Vice Chair Darden Rice introduced a proposal to ban smokeless tobacco products from the city’s athletic venues. The proposal [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-11-06T12:23:57-07:00November, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Boston votes to ban chewing tobacco from ballparks, including Fenway

Source: www.washingtonpost.comAuthor: Marissa Payne Baseball in Boston is about to change. On Wednesday, the City Council voted unanimously to make its baseball parks and stadiums, including historic Fenway, tobacco-free zones. And yes, the ordinance covers the kind of tobacco you chew, a longtime favorite of many MLB players. “This action will save lives by reducing the number of young people who begin to use smokeless tobacco because they followed the example of the Major Leaguers they idolize,” Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said in a statement sent to The Washington Post. “We thank Mayor Marty Walsh, the City Council and Boston’s health community for their leadership on this important issue.” Red Sox owner John Henry was also supportive of the legislation. “It’s a great thing,” Henry said (via Boston.com) when Mayor Walsh first proposed the legislation last month. “I’m very supportive.” The ban doesn’t just apply to players, but also fans, and it covers all stadiums from major-league to organized amateur games. Those found in violation of the ordinance face a $250 fine, Boston’s Fox affiliate reports. Boston is now the second major U.S. city to ban tobacco at its baseball stadiums. San Francisco, which banned the substance in April, was the first. Both cities had very good reasons to nix the chew. Smokeless tobacco, like cigarettes, contains the addictive substance nicotine and its users can become more at-risk for illnesses such as cancer, gum disease and heart disease, according to the Mayo Clinic. “You can call chewing tobacco by [...]

Charlotte Parker2015-09-04T10:57:51-07:00September, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Smokeless tobacco ingrained in baseball, despite bans and Gwynn’s death

Source: www.latimes.comAuthor: Gary Klein Utility player Mark DeRosa loads a wad of smokeless tobacco while playing for the San Francisco Giants before a game against the Dodgers on March 31, 2011. The use of smokeless tobacco is prevalent in the major leagues. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images) Rick Vanderhook played for Cal State Fullerton's 1984 College World Series championship team and was a Titans assistant when they won two more. So he remembers the days when cans and pouches of smokeless tobacco were omnipresent in the uniform pockets of the participants. Not anymore. The NCAA banned tobacco use on the field in the early 1990s. "It's probably cut back, I'll say, almost 90% compared to what it was 25 years ago," said Vanderhook, who in his fourth season as head coach has guided the Titans back to Omaha, where they will open against defending national champion Vanderbilt on Sunday at 5 p.m. Smokeless tobacco remains ingrained in baseball culture, however, including the college and high school levels where it is banned. "It sounds bad, but it's part of the game," said Fullerton pitcher Thomas Eshelman, echoing nearly every coach and player interviewed for this article. Minor league players can be fined for having tobacco products in their locker or partaking on the field. Major leaguers are prohibited from using tobacco during televised interviews and player appearances, and they cannot carry tobacco products in their uniforms. But they are otherwise not prohibited from using it on the field. Before he died [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2015-06-15T12:22:26-07:00June, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Lawmaker proposes ‘smokeless tobacco’ ban at all baseball venues

Source: www.santacruzsentinel.com Author: David E. Early, Bay Area News Group For decades, Major League Baseball’s goofy love affair with chewing tobacco was so passionate that the gooey stuff was stocked by teams in clubhouses as surely as jocks and socks. Nearly all ball players had golf-ball-sized cheek bumps, and part of the show was spitting streams of saliva in dugouts from coast to coast. But now the end may be near. If a bill formally introduced in the state Capitol Tuesday becomes law, the use of “smokeless tobacco” will be banned in every baseball venue in the state — from San Jose sandlots to San Francisco’s AT&T Park. They would join minor league parks, which already outlaw it. “This is all about helping young people. We want to stop youth from being exposed to cancer,” said freshman Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, author of the bill. “Kids emulate ball players. If they see them use it, they will use it as well.” The legislation was touted Tuesday at news conferences in Sacramento and San Francisco, where leaders of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids took the podium. Their program, called “Knock Tobacco Out of the Park,” included commentary about oral cancer taking down beloved Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn, a retired San Diego Padre, in 2014 at age 54. And now retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is battling cancer that he openly blames on his longtime chewing habit. Opio Dupree, Thurmond’s chief of staff, said Tuesday that the penalties for violating [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2015-02-25T08:49:21-07:00February, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Tobacco use and baseball

Source: www.quitsmokingforyou.com Like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco (snuff and chewing tobacco), cause mouth cancer, gum disease, and heart disease. Yet many think that chewing tobacco is safe or less so than smoking. This is not true! In 1986, the Surgeon normal closed that the use of smokeless tobacco “is not a safe substitute for smoking cigarettes. It can cause cancer and a whole of noncancerous conditions and can lead to nicotine addiction and dependence.” Since 1991, the National Cancer institute (Nci) has officially recommended that the group avoid and desist the use of all tobacco products, including smokeless tobacco. Nci also recognizes that nitrosamines, found in tobacco products, are not safe at any level. Chewing tobacco and baseball have a long tight affiliation, rooted in the cultural confidence among players and fans that baseball players chew tobacco and it is just part of the grand old game. This mystique is slowing changing with campaigns by ballplayers who have had or have seen friends with mouth cancer caused by chewing tobacco use. Jeff Bagwell Jeff Bagwell, retired first baseman with the Houston Astros and Joe Garagiola, a previous baseball player and commentator, campaign against tobacco use among children and addicted adults. In 1993, when Bagwell was 25-years-old, his dentist discovered leukoplakia, a whitish pre-cancerous sore in his mouth where he continually located chewing tobacco. About 5% of leukoplakias institute into cancer. Fortunately this did not happen to Jeff Bagwell due to the early detection by his dentist. Rick Bender, The Man Without [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-06-04T20:47:24-07:00June, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Stephen Strasburg attempts to quit smokeless tobacco

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Adam Kilgore Like any other high school kid, Stephen Strasburg wanted to emulate the major league baseball players he watched on television. He mimicked their actions down to the last detail. He rolled his pants up to reveal high socks, wore wristbands at the plate and, during downtime, opened tins of chewing tobacco and pinched some in his lower lip. Years later, having developed a powerful addiction, Strasburg regrets ever trying smokeless tobacco. Last fall, Tony Gwynn - his college coach at San Diego State and one of those players he grew up idolizing - began radiation treatments for parotid cancer, a diagnosis Gwynn blamed on using smokeless tobacco. In the wake of Gwynn's cancer diagnosis, Strasburg has resolved to quit smokeless tobacco while he recuperates from Tommy John surgery. He doesn't want to face the myriad health risks borne from tobacco use, and he doesn't want kids who want to be like him to see him with a packed lower lip. Strasburg conflates many activities with dipping, and he has yet to eradicate the habit. But he is determined he will. "I'm still in the process of quitting," Strasburg, 22, said. "I've made a lot of strides, stopped being so compulsive with it. I'm hoping I'm going to be clean for spring training. It's going to be hard, because it's something that's embedded in the game." Smokeless tobacco has long been entrenched in baseball. In the 1980s, wads of it bulged in batters' cheeks. More recently, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-01-31T19:50:01-07:00January, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Former Angels outfielder Ed Kirkpatrick dies at 66

Source: Los Angeles Times By: Mike DiGiovanna Former Angels outfielder Ed Kirkpatrick, who played parts of 16 major league seasons with five clubs from 1962-77, died Monday after a long struggle with throat cancer. He was 66. A graduate of Glendora High School, Kirkpatrick, nicknamed “Spanky,” signed with the Angels at the age of 17 and spent the first seven years (1962-68) of his career with them as a part-time player. Kirkpatrick also played for the Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Texas Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers before retiring after 1977, finishing with a career average of .238, 85 home runs and 424 runs batted in. Four years after his playing career, in 1981, Kirkpatrick was involved in a horrific automobile accident that left him in a coma for 5 ½ months and in a wheelchair, partially paralyzed, for the rest of his life. “At parties and other functions, Kirkpatrick never lost his sense of humor and uplifting personality,” former Times national baseball writer Ross Newhan wrote in his blog Monday. “He was always willing to send a bet to the track or challenge friends to a football wager, a glint in his eye, and he never lost the love and support of his wife, Judy, who was beside him through all the often difficult years.” The city of Glendora presents the annual Ed Kirkpatrick Award to an outstanding member of the community who has provided exemplary and extraordinary service to youth sports in the city.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-11-16T11:40:21-07:00November, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn to begin oral cancer treatment

The Associated Press Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn soon will begin treatment for parotid cancer, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Saturday. The cancer was discovered last month after Gwynn, 50, underwent his third bout of surgery since 1997 to remove a tumor on his parotid gland, which pumps saliva into the mouth. The former San Diego Padres star said he faces seven to eight weeks of five-day-a-week radiation treatments and once-a-week chemotherapy treatments, the Union-Tribune reported. Gwynn said doctors told him they feel they caught the cancer early and "there was not much of it there." "They say this is a slow-moving but aggressive form of cancer," Gwynn told the paper. "I'm going to be aggressive and not slow moving in treating this." Gwynn suspects the cancer could be linked to his career-long practice of using chewing tobacco. "I haven't discussed that with the doctors yet, but I'm thinking it's related to dipping," said Gwynn, who resumed using chewing tobacco after the first two surgeries. Gwynn is San Diego State's baseball coach, and the school confirmed Gwynn's condition to The Associated Press. Gwynn plans to return to his alma mater, which he has coached since 2003. He retired from the majors in 2001 after 20 seasons with the Padres, in which he won a National League record-tying eight batting championships and was named to the All-Star Game 16 times.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-10-10T11:28:00-07:00October, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Majors to chew it over as big-league tobacco policy isn’t up to snuff

Source: www.nydailynews.com/sports Author: Filip Bondy Derek Jeter steps to the plate again, his jaw churning ferociously on some foreign, sticky substance. It’s just gum, and Jeter will prove that to the world now and then by blowing a giant bubble. But until the silly pink ball emerges, who knows? It might be gum, yet it also could be a pouch of smokeless or dip tobacco — that stubborn, traditional chew of choice for baseball players throughout history. And this is exactly what drives Jimmie Lee Solomon crazy, because sometimes he just can’t win. There are enough bad examples in his world. The executive VP of baseball operations for MLB worries that kids will get the wrong idea, and that baseball will be hurled back into the Nicotine Age. "It’s gum a lot of the time, not tobacco,"says Solomon, who has worked for 16 years to eliminate chewing tobacco and dip from the big-league culture. "Unfortunately, it can have the same, impressionable effect.” You know the most dangerous of all drugs in baseball? It isn’t steroids, and it isn’t human growth hormone. Those performance enhancers are health terrors in their own right, impacting the very bones of the game. But legal, smokeless tobacco in its multiple chewable forms still provides the addictive poisons linked most conclusively to illness and fatal disease. The Mayo Clinic identifies an assortment of horrors associated with chewing tobacco, whether it is packaged in the form of leaves, paste or twists: Tooth decay, gum disease, high blood [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-05-27T13:32:02-07:00May, 2009|Oral Cancer News|