Smokeless Tobacco usage banned for all future players of MLB

What I’ve heard thrown around in regards to the new policy for smokeless tobacco usage in baseball is that all current players ‘put the screws’ to all future players by banning them from smokeless tobacco usage. All current players are grandfathered into the clause so they’re still allowed to use the product. To me, this is very interesting. While it might seem that future players got the shaft – and it could be very tough and odd to see it enforced – the current agreement just may save future lives.

As someone who has tried continually to drop the habit since I played baseball, I think this is really great.

I don’t know if I started to perform this awful habit because I saw it around the ballpark on television when I watched the game when I was young. I would hypothesize that the reason that I started to do it was that it continually found itself in the environment I was continually in for many hours when I was college aged. It was always at the ballpark or diamond and if you didn’t have chew, there was a teammate who had it and was willing to give you one. Unfortunately, the stuff is habit forming.

The elimination of it on television in a decade or so – if the agreement isn’t altered – will be helpful in eliminating a large sector of the market it originates in.

Thumbs up to baseball on this one. I don’t want my son seeing his heroes doing this trash. And if I live to say I gave it up, I’ll make sure he never goes near it. I love him too much to see him fall prey to a destructive habit like this.