Get Off My Lawn: MLB Needs Chaw

As happy I am that Major League Baseball has avoided months of boring articles and tweets by Jon Heyman by agreeing to a new CBA – there is one detail that boggles my mind a bit. A new ban on Smokeless Tobacco. NO CHAW?

This is just another in a long line of reasons we as a society are getting soft. These days, MLB’ers that chew are few and far between – but it is fun to see the ones that do squirt brown liquid ten feet before taking a called third strike in a 13-minute at bat during a meaningless June Interleague game. While I understand there is a health element for ballplayers, the MLB is not and has never influenced kids to dip. This is coming from someone who used to ride his bike a mile every week during the summer to buy a pouch of Grape Big League Chew. Did that turn me into a smokeless tobacco user? No it did not because when I got old enough to dip, I realized it was disgusting. You know who chews tobacco? Major League Baseball players and guys that have zero chance of kissing a girl.

TORONTO, CANADA – SEPTEMBER 9: Eduardo RodriguezBaseball has a problem – but this is not it. Nobody under the age of 30 cares about our National Pastime. At this point, all of MLB’s efforts should be put towards solving that puzzle. World Series games end at 2 AM – and the best player in the last 50 years can barely get a Subway endorsement. Instead, they are instituting a tobacco rule that is going to require an ump to look up a player’s service time pre-game, versus figuring out how to institute an accurate strike zone.

This is a slippery slope, people. What’s next – are we going to ban Slump Busters? Will there be a letter writing campaign to stop broadcasts from referring to Cans Of Corns because of their relation to dreaded High Fructose Corn Syrup. Bottom line, we are screwed and this is probably just the start of it. First, they made hockey player wear helmets, then the NFL instituted concussion protocol, and now this. 

GET OFF MY LAWN.