Source:http://www.wsj.com Author: Larry Thornberry  The Major League Baseball season starts Monday, with many a pinch of tobacco between many a cheek and gum. Not everyone is happy about this (about the chewing tobacco, that is). The San Francisco board of supervisors is considering a measure to put chew off-limits at every ball field in the city, including AT&T Park, where the world-champion Giants play. A bill introduced February in the California Assembly would do the same in pro and league venues across the whole state. Major League Baseball supports this approach, since it cannot get the powerful players union on board with a chewing-tobacco ban. No word on how the laws would be enforced, but the sponsor of the state bill says don’t expect chew cops in dugouts or snuff-sniffing dogs in stands. Until relatively recently, tobacco around baseball clubhouses wasn’t considered much to worry about. As a young fan in the 1950s, I was used to players like Nellie Fox and Bill Tuttle, who stuffed so much chaw in their cheeks that they appeared to be trying to swallow a softball. One of my favorite players of the day, Rocky Bridges, looked like a chipmunk with a buzzcut. Baseball cards, an obsession with preteen boys for the better part of the last century, first came with packs of cigarettes, only later with bubble gum. Back in the day, sportswriters weren’t quick to link tobacco and the early deaths of former ballplayers. It was obvious in the case of Bill Tuttle, who died of mouth cancer at [...]