The passing of Tony Gwynn serves as a reminder that chewing tobacco will kill you just as easily as cigarettes
Tony Gwynn was an unlikely legend in sports. He didn’t cut a heroic figure, he didn’t live a life of opulence, with flashy cars, shiny jewelry or all the trappings of stardom. He represented a time long past where men simply played the game they loved because…well, they loved it.
His numbers speak for themselves: in 20 years, all with the San Diego Padres (a rarity today), Gwynn boasted a batting average of .338 (hitting no less than .300 in each of his 19 seasons), with 3,141hits, 135 home runs and 1,138 runs batted in (RBIs). Naturally these achievements landed him a well-deserved spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007.
Sadly, less than a decade later, Tony Gwynn died after a four year battle with cancer. He was only 54.
At the time of his death, Gwynn was enjoying the next phase of his life, managing the San Diego State Aztecs almost from the day he retired as a Padre. However, another reality became a part of Gwynn’s life as he had a number of procedures to remove noncancerous growths 1997. In 2010, Gwynn was diagnosed with cancer of a salivary gland and had both lymph nodes removed.
Gwynn’s health problems had a single source: his chewing tobacco habit he had since 1981. In other words, his death was completely preventable.
If the death of Tony Gwynn at such a relatively young age can teach anything, it’s that dipping can be fatal. I know people who chew, and often I think about the day when I hear about them getting cancer too. It’s a reality, and the idea that in 2014, people still willingly do something that can kill them (this is a broad statement, I know). For the most part, I think it’s because while chewing/dipping is a disgusting habit, there really isn’t much of a campaign to raise awareness about just how devastating and how aggressive oral cancer can be. Even if not fatal, oral cancer can cause the loss of teeth and even parts of your face.
When I was a kid in the 80’s the American Cancer Society had a striking ad campaign featuring actor Yul Brynner, which aired after his death from lung cancer. The sight of a bald Russian man saying that smoking essentially killed him scared the shit out of me. Not just for myself, but because I grew up in a house of smokers, and that was enough for me never to light up (except for those two years in college were I smoked regularly, and it took an entirely different scare for me to quit).
That we don’t have the same sorts of stark PSAs today is a shame. It was aggressive ad campaigns such as these that helped begin the decline in smoking. While it didn’t kill the habit, this was the beginning of establishing that cigarettes weren’t as cool as they were fatal. I believe the perception surrounding chewing tobacco as something white trash or hillbilly-related causes it to be swept under the rug and ignored. If dipping was an urban problem, if people had to deal with the sight of dippers holding their spit cups on subways and in downtown areas, there’d be much more of an emphasis on the issue.
Fact of the matter is, while more people certainly smoke than chew, both have potentially fatal consequences, and to see someone as remarkable as Tony Gwynn fall victim to such a thing…it’s sad and it’s upsetting, because it really could be avoided. If only he recorded a similar PSA, when he knew things weren’t going to get better, or that the treatments were no longer working…imagine the effect on young kids, or even adults who looked to him as the legend he is.
Sadly, the only lesson we can take from this is his death. A death that won’t be the last from tobacco, smoked or chewed.
On a personal note, the only signed baseball I ever had came from Tony Gwynn. While not an Indiana native, Gwynn would become a transplanted Hoosier, and as such, in 2000, he brought the Padres up to Fort Wayne for an exhibition game against the Class A Padres affiliate Fort Wayne Wizards (now known as the Tin Caps). Having an honest to God Major League team visit the Summit City was a big deal, and Gwynn, being the amazing guy he was, ingratiated himself with fans, in an area known for being fans of either the Chicago Cubs or Cincinnati Reds.
Being a 23-year-old standing among kids waiting to get a baseball signed, Gwynn looked at me and asked, “are you gonna sell this?” Now that was a question I never expected to hear, but I assured him I wouldn’t, at which point he chuckled, told me he was kidding and signed my ball. It was a brief moment, and to be honest, I didn’t think much about it then as all my loyalties were (and still are) Yankee-based.
To this day, I still have that ball, and I always will.