• 1/15/2005
  • Lexington, KY
  • By Jim Warren
  • Lexington Herald-Leader

Legends warn of chew’s dangers

A manly slugger digs in at the plate and awaits the pitch, his hands clenched tightly around his bat, and a hunk of chewing tobacco crammed firmly in his cheek.

It’s an image that has said “baseball” for 100 years — and it’s an image that baseball doesn’t want today’s youngsters to emulate.

That’s why representatives of the Lexington Legends minor league baseball team joined Dr. Brent Mortenson, a Lexington oral surgeon, to warn freshmen at Bryan Station High School yesterday about the health dangers of smokeless tobacco.

The presentation, a partnership between the Legends and the National Spit Tobacco Education Program, is one of several planned for Lexington schools.

“Baseball players have been using chewing tobacco, spit tobacco, smokeless tobacco, whatever you want to call it, for many years,” Legends announcer Larry Glover told the students. “But baseball is trying to disassociate itself from that. Baseball is trying to change.”

Unfortunately, many young Kentuckians haven’t gotten the word. According to the most recent federal figures, 13.7 percent of Kentucky high school students use smokeless tobacco — one of the nation’s five highest rates. One reason, critics contend, is that too many kids are copying that old image of the tobacco-chewing baseball hero.

They shouldn’t, Mortenson told the students yesterday.

He presented a video about Bill Tuttle, a center fielder with Detroit, Kansas City and Minnesota from 1952 to 1963. Tuttle died in 1998 from oral cancer that literally destroyed half his face. Tuttle believed the cancer resulted from his 40-year tobacco-chewing habit — a habit he took up as a young player — and he spent the last years of his life telling youngsters to avoid smokeless tobacco.

Another video told of baseball coach Bob Leslie, who took up snuff at age 13 after seeing professional baseball players use it on TV. Leslie died at age 31 in 1998 from oral cancer that first appeared at the precise spot between his cheek and gum where he had kept a pinch of snuff while he played and coached.

But changing people’s attitudes might be tough.

The tobacco industry contends that a scientific link between smokeless tobacco and oral cancer has not been found, and that smokeless remains a safer alternative to cigarette smoking.

And Mindy Wright, a teacher and girls volleyball coach at Bryan Station, said she taught in some Kentucky schools where boys told her they were allowed to openly use smokeless tobacco at home. Their parents thought it was safer than cigarettes, she said.

But the pros don’t see it the same way.

Minor league baseball banned smokeless tobacco several years ago, Glover said, and players caught using it now face fines of $100 or more. That’s a stiff penalty on a minor leaguer’s salary, he noted.

Although the Major Leagues don’t prohibit smokeless tobacco, Glover said they do offer seminars and programs to discourage its use among players.

That’s happening, Glover and Mortenson said, because of growing evidence that long-term use of chewing tobacco and snuff increases the risk for a host of health problems. The most serious, oral cancer, is a disfiguring, potentially deadly disease that causes 8,000 deaths annually.

Just how many oral cancer deaths directly stem from smokeless tobacco is unknown, but federal health officials say that quitting smokeless tobacco reduces risk.

Prompted by such reports, many major leaguers now are giving up their chews. An estimated 31 percent of major league players now use smokeless, down from 40 percent only three years ago.

Veterans such as 2004 World Series hero Curt Schilling of the Boston Red Sox now speak openly about their struggles to overcome addiction to smokeless tobacco, and former stars such as Joe Garagiola and Lenny Dykstra urge rookie players not to take up the habit.
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Herald-Leader researcher Linda Niemi contributed to this story