Smokeless foe Gomez says ban the can

Health experts want Major League Baseball to ban the use of smokeless tobacco by its players.

Edi Gomez wonders what took so long.

Gomez is the patriarch of Las Vegas' American Legion baseball program. He turned 88 on April 11 and has done a lot of interesting things in his life. These would include fronting top Latin bands on Hollywood Boulevard and the Sunset Strip, running around with Frank and Dean and Sammy and Peter Lawford, and counting down the seconds until midnight on the Las Vegas Strip in the original "Ocean's Eleven," the one starring Frank and Dean and Sammy and Peter Lawford.

Yet the thing he is most proud of is Rule 6 under "Playing Regulations" in the official Department of Nevada American Legion Baseball Official Rules & Regulations book.

"The use of any form of tobacco by a player, coach, manager or umpire while on the playing field is prohibited. Any violation of the rule will cause the individual to be removed from the game."

And his teeth to turn all icky and brown.

"I hate spitting on the field and all that stuff with a passion," said Gomez, who became chairman of the state Legion program in 1979 and served in that or some related capacity until the mid-2000s, when he retired to spend more time with a raven-haired beauty, Raven, his wife of 52 years.

Gomez instituted that rule in 1985. It was adopted by the national Legion program a year later and by minor league baseball in 1993, although, to be honest, I have noticed a lot of guys around the 51s batting cage with suspicious bulges in their hip pockets that look roughly the size of a Skoal can or souvenir hockey puck.

Normally, if a player, coach, manager or umpire wanted to chew, dip, roll or grind tobacco into a fine powder and smoke it out of the hollowed-out end of an old Louisville Slugger, I'd say have at it. I'm not a big fan of people telling other people what they can or can't do with legal substances, even if statistics show those substances can kill you.

However, when it comes to baseball and smokeless tobacco, I believe in Ford Frick's asterisk.

I believe in the asterisk because most kids are impressionable and look up to ballplayers as role models, and because some parents don't believe in sending their kids to their rooms without their supper.

I once was an impressionable kid who looked up to ballplayers and stuffed my cheek with seedless grapes until there was a noticeable jut.

My sister thought I was imitating the squirrels in our backyard. She had never heard of Bill Mazeroski, was oblivious that he played second base -- my position -- for the Pittsburgh Pirates with a giant wad of tobacco in his jaw.

Eventually, I would bite down on my seedless grape chaw and there would be so much juice it would dribble down my chin. My mom would scold me for not acting my age or, if some of it dripped onto the floor she had just waxed, for making a mess. Then she would take God or Maz's name in vain.

Had it been tobacco juice, I am sure I would have been sent to my room without supper for an entire month. I would have emerged looking like a Buddhist monk or Don Shula on Nutrisystem.

That Henry Waxman guy, the politician from California who worked Roger Clemens over pretty good during those Congressional hearings on steroids, is among those calling for the major league players' association to follow in the footsteps of Edi Gomez, minor league baseball and my mother in banning the use of smokeless tobacco between the foul lines. But I don't see it happening, because the players' union is more powerful than Albert Pujols after a protein shake. And just wait until Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds sic their lobbyists on Capitol Hill and Tony La Russa, who always sides with the players, weighs in.

"Good luck," said Brandon Medders, a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. "It's been part of the game for 100 years."

So has scratching oneself in the on-deck circle. Like using smokeless tobacco, there's no law against that, either.

Although, come to think of it, there has been a lot less of both since Lenny Dykstra retired.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352.