It must have been an oversight. Surely the Major League Baseball Players Association would not deliberately choose to encourage kids to mimic a habit as unhealthy and distasteful as chewing tobacco. Yet that's what the ballplayers' union has agreed to do. The MLBPA is endorsing and promoting a chewing gum produced and packaged to look like the chewing tobacco used by many major league athletes.
The product, manufactured by Amurol Confections, is even called “Big League Chew.” A company partnership with the players association bills the stuff as the “Official Chewing Gum” of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
The gum is shredded and sold in packaging that could pass for adult chewing tobacco. The troublesome marketing of this tobacco-related gum to kids is made worse by the prospect of big leaguers promoting it.
After noting a recent Blade editorial denouncing the continued sales of candy cigarettes to kids, several health and anti-smoking organizations released a letter they had sent jointly to the MLBPA.
Leaders of the American Heart Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the American Lung Association asked Donald Fehr, executive director of the players association, to drop the alliance with Big League Chew.
“While the chewing gum itself may be harmless,” they wrote, “the message is not, particularly if you're a parent who does not want their son or daughter to ruin their health by using spit tobacco or any other tobacco products.”
Because kids all over the world look up to professional athletes, the anti-smoking activists continued, their heroes would be teaching them, in effect, to imitate the poor example of adult ballplayers who chew tobacco.
Little League Baseball's web site warns of youngsters getting “the false impression that tobacco is somehow part of baseball” by the prevalence of tobacco-chewing stars on the field. Major League players promoting tobacco-like chewing gum products would only perpetuate that myth.
The health risks of spit tobacco, including cancer, are well documented. Mr. Fehr and the Major League ballplayers he represents must do the right thing for baseball's young, impressionable fans and reconsider any agreement that endorses a product which could one day lead to a far more dangerous habit.
First Published May 9, 2003, 11:27 a.m.