As the World Series gets underway, I want to address what seems to me the most pressing issue in professional baseball, which is not steroids: What's with all the obsessive-compulsive behavior, most particularly the chewing of bubble gum?
My husband weaned himself from most televised sports a while back, but our beloved Cubbies waited for the playoffs to break our hearts again, so he's drowning his sorrows watching other teams take a run at the championship. Since we have a new TV that enables us to count the hairs in a player's goatee, I join him occasionally, at least long enough to figure out who the underdog is. After all these years with the Cubs, I'm that kind of fan.
But I can't sit through a whole game because these guys make me so nervous. Look at all that chewing gum. No, look at the speed with which they chew. Good grief, they're all going to be at the doctor's next week with temporomandibular joint syndrome. They're going to wear their teeth down to the nub and have to get dental implants. From the managers down to the benchwarmers, they chew in the dugout, when they're at bat, during the singing of the national anthem, while they're singing the national anthem, which is a pretty neat trick.
There's a great tradition of repetitive behaviors among baseball players -- more than with other professional athletes, when you think about it. All those arcane finger signals, the crossing of oneself as one approaches the batter's box and then again if one safely gets on base, the adjusting of caps and helmets and gloves and protectors; this is an extremely edgy, habit-driven bunch of guys. Basketball coaches don't chew gum and fidget; they wear fabulous suits and hair gel, and the players are too busy hauling from one end of the court to another to have time for extraneous gestures. Football coaches pace and wait for someone to dump a bucket of ice on their heads when they win -- and they yell a lot, which seems somehow less neurotic than chewing and gesturing. As for football players, most of them appear to lack altogether the fine motor skills you need to be talented at the little gestures.
Maybe it's a pacing problem. Serious baseball fans love the rhythm of the game, the suspense, the zen patience in the outfield, the explosive response to a hit, the strategies, the teamwork. The rest of us sometimes wonder about what feels like a lot of hurry up and wait -- or rather, given the way the game works, a lot of wait and hurry up. Maybe these gum-chewing guys are like racetrack thoroughbreds, finely tuned athletes (and, well, not so finely-tuned managers, and what about the paunch on that pitcher, but stay with me here) who just can't stand to hold still.
Or maybe it's peer pressure. Oral gratification has been on the Major League agenda since the dark days of chewing tobacco, and we still get an occasional glimpse of an unregenerate death-wisher drooling brown spittle off that bulge in his jaw. Somebody with a mastication jones must have turned to bubble gum in the interest of living long enough to enjoy his multi-million-dollar salary, and then everybody had to do it. This theory doesn't explain all the frantic hand signals and adjustments, but it's a nice, benign explanation for behavior that in another setting might require extended therapy or the use of psychopharmaceuticals.
Getting back to horses, though -- I bring up the gum not to make fun of the players, really, but to raise a safety issue. One of the first things a horseback rider learns is never ride with gum in your mouth. Something surprising happens, you gasp or take a tumble, and all of a sudden your life depends on whether a bystander happens to know the Heimlich maneuver, because that wad of gum is standing between you and oxygen. I can't tell from the distance shots if the players keep chewing when they're in the field, but I've seen the batters do it, so I can only assume. Guys, please, hand it to the bat boy or stick it on the outside of the Gatorade cooler. You're one collision away missing the champagne in the club house, big time.
The use of chewing tobacco in cans, under brand names like Copenhagen and Skoal, is relatively new. In the early days of the game, baseball players used chewing tobacco - the kind that came in a pouch and would literally be chewed - to keep their mouths moist during games, said Greg Connolly, a Harvard professor who has studied tobacco marketing practices.
Between the 1950s and the 1970s, cigarettes become more popular, he said. But during the next decade, as the dangers of cigarettes were increasingly known, players moved to dip, a concentrated version of chewing tobacco that is tucked between the lip and gum, Connolly said.
Tobacco companies were eager to help transition players to dip tobacco by giving out free samples, he said.
Players do believe they perform better with a slight nicotine buzz, Connolly said, and there is some evidence to back up the claim. Connolly tested minor-league players in the Pittsburgh Pirates system and found quicker reaction times among tobacco users, but less cognitive ability.
"Their reflex response is quick," Connolly said, "If you have to think, they're in tough shape."
Connolly said national use of dip tobacco is down. One 2000 study had use by males at less than 4 percent. But among baseball players, it has remained fairly steady, with about one-third or more reported users.
Connolly said Major League Baseball should institute a ban in its ballparks, in line with the bans in college and the minor leagues.
"If you banned it, I think players would go along with it," he said.
I honestly do not know a single baseball fan.No one I know can understand why anybody in their right mind givers a fiddler's sh*t about baseball.
somewhere in the second inning, he says, "I never realized how boring this game really was."