Okay, so I got curious the other day about something I used to see all the time as a kid: baseball players chewing tobacco. You don’t see it as much anymore, so I wanted to find out if it’s still a thing in the major leagues.
First, I hit up Google. Just typed in “do baseball players still chew tobacco?” I figured I’d get a quick answer that way.
The results were a little bit all over the place. Some articles talked about how it used to be super common, showing old-timey pictures of players with huge wads of chew in their cheeks. Others talked about rule changes.
Digging Deeper
So, I started reading through some of the search result snippets. It turns out, that Major League Baseball started cracking down on this. I scrolled through the page to find out more details.
- I learned that they banned smokeless tobacco in minor league baseball a while back.
- I found out that some cities have actually banned it in their ballparks.
It seems like the MLB and the players’ union have agreed to discourage the use of smokeless tobacco, but it’s not a total, league-wide ban for the major league guys…yet.
Basically, I figured out that while you might still see a player here or there with a dip in, it’s way less common than it used to be. The culture is definitely shifting, and the rules are getting stricter. It’s probably on its way out, which, let’s be honest, is a good thing for the players’ health.
