RealGM

After Travis Snider's home run, as the inning ended, the camera showed Snider in the dugout. he takes a can of what i assume to be snuff, takes a pinch and puts it in his mouth.

i thought that snuff/chew had its day. Thought that most players were smart enough to know that snuff is awful for you and, starting in the minors, they actually educated the players of the detriments of chewable tobacco.

anyone know how prevalent snuff/chew is in baseball nowadays?

Much less prevalent than in the 90s. I know it got banned in the minors so that's why it's rare in the majors now. I can only think of Nick Swisher and Terry Francona that use.

These two went pretty crazy with it

Wasn't Zaun choking on chew when he got knocked out sliding into second a few years ago?

Borders always had the chew going back in the day!

stick with chewing gum...... or sunflower seeds

don't forget Ed Sprague

Snider and Cecil are big on it, and I think Marcum too. Cecil had a wad in during an interview once. Overall its definitely not as bad as it was 15 years ago.

Manny and Big Papi are two other names that come to mind that are avid dippers/chewers.

Not a fan either.

Tony Gwynn was recently diagnosed with cancer and he blames it on the tobacco he chewed. Hopefully it brings about some change.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5665646

darth_federer wrote:Not a fan either.

Tony Gwynn was recently diagnosed with cancer and he blames it on the tobacco he chewed. Hopefully it brings about some change.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5665646

While I don't doubt that having chewing tobacco and repetitive trauma to the mucosa of the oral cavity from fiberglass (used as a delivery agent) is helpful - there is no current scientific literature linking "dip" to parotid cancer. Yes, it is linked to throat cancer, tongue cancer, etc. But not the parotid gland. Having said that, I would not be shocked if this habit was a contributory factor to his developing malignant cancer.

One surprise to me, is that "dip" is apparently highly addictive. Gwynn apparently can't kick the habit and is still using chewing tobacco - even after he had three non-malignant tumors removed from his parotid. That to me, was a huge shock - I thought it was a game-time habit, not something they continued to do afterwards.