Keep On Dipping: Ball Players Are Not Role Models

It’s opening day, have you had your tin of Skoal today?

In today’s New York Times, Bobby Valentine, former Mets manager and current analyst for ESPN, wrote an OP-ED column on smokeless tobacco use in Major League Baseball.

Throughout his insightful article Valentine states the many health hazards that come as a result of dipping over a long career in baseball. According to the piece over one-third of current major league players use some form of smokeless tobacco. Valentine discusses his own personal experience and regret about dipping early his playing career. He cites examples of prominent players and coaches who have struggled with their addiction to the tin, such as Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn and rising star Steven Strasberg.

The former Mets manager and current director of public safety in Stamford, Connecticut considers the cans of Skoal that outline so many major leaguer’s back pockets to be a stain on the sport and a bag influence on our nation’s young.

Valentine suggests that the MLB follow suit with the NHL and NCAA and ban smokeless tobacco from the playing surface and during competition all together.

And the truth is he has a great point, and he’s probably right. His plea is well thought out and doesn’t skip over the allure and reverence dipping has held in the annals of baseball history. All logic says the MLB should definitely issue a ban, but in my opinion there really should be no need.

As Charles Barkley once famously said, “I’m not a role model,” and neither are 98 percent of professional athletes. Hell, everyone is a hypocrite at one point or another, from parents to teachers and most explicitly politicians.

Just about every baseball player past the age of little league has tried smokeless tobacco at one point or another. As spring approaches a new batch of high school kids are packing their first lip, and if memory serves me correctly they’re also getting light-headed and vomiting somewhere.

We certainly do mimic professional athletes to a certain extent, and dipping is entrenched in baseball lore. Sometimes it gets boring out in the field, dipping gives you something to do. It’s a lame excuse, but there’s plenty of truth in it.

Other than the obvious pussification of our culture, the real reason dipping shouldn’t be banned from baseball is because it’s so thoroughly intertwined with our national pastime. There is something strangely romantic about the utterly disgusting habit. Tobacco is as much a part of baseball as taking out the second baseman on a double play. It’s blue collar. It’s tough. It’s baseball; if professional athletes want to lose their teeth and ruin their gums that’s their problem.

Blame the store clerks who sell it to the kids, the high school coaches who turn a blind eye, and the parents who don’t notice the Gatorade bottles with an inch of brown gook laying around their kid’s room.

Don’t blame baseball, it’s our pastime and therefore infallible, at least in this writer’s twisted, unsubstantiated opinion.

[NY Times]