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After autographing anti-spit tobacco baseball cards, Joe Garagiola poses with Antonia Correa, tobacco specialist from the department of Community Partnership. Craig Sorensen of UNMC won the drawing for a baseball autographed by Garagiola. |
Garagiola is best known as a former major league player, television personality and inductee of the Broadcaster’s Wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Today, the gregarious, 77-year-old serves as the national chairman of the National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP).
“I’m hoping Nebraska will be the lead state,” he told about 60 people during his April 25 visit to UNMC. The visit, sponsored by NSTEP and the Nebraska Dental Association, was one of several stops to help fuel Nebraska’s anti-spit tobacco efforts.
“There’s so much enthusiasm here,” he said. “One person can make a difference. You don’t have to be as loud as I am, just get in the trenches and start working.”
The warm up
Before his formal speech, Garagiola talked about his nine years in the major leagues, saying his top salary was $13,000, compared to the minimum salaries of $300,000 today. He also talked about the 1952 season when the team he was playing for, the Pittsburgh Pirates, lost 112 of 154 games.
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Smokeless does not mean harmless
Then in the next breath, he launched into his other passion. “Those damn tobacco companies,” he said. “They lie.”
Smokeless does not mean harmless, he said, calling the habit gross, ugly and cancerous.
“It’s a hidden epidemic,” he said.
Beyond the dugout
Once associated largely with baseball players, he said the use of chewing tobacco has decreased among baseball players but has increased among other groups, including women.
In the dugout, Garagiola said he and his colleagues used to play competitive games with the tobacco, including who could spit the farthest, the straightest, and who could drown the ant. “Unfortunately, the thing was we were enhancing our addiction,” he said.
Fortunately, Garagiola quit the habit after his daughter asked him if he was going to die from the ill effects of tobacco.
He also told a story of a 9-year-old boy whose grandfather got him started “dipping.” Already angry, he was further taken aback when the grandfather said, ” ‘Geez Joe, the kid doesn’t inhale.’ ”
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Gruen Von Behrens |
Garagiola’s passion comes from seeing how cancer affects patients and their families. He recalled speaking at the funeral of a 31-year-old friend whose cancer was attributed to smokeless tobacco. “I was standing near the altar looking down at his wife holding their baby thinking, ‘This didn’t have to happen.'”
He also talked about 26-year-old Gruen Von Behrens, an oral cancer survivor who’s had 28 disfiguring surgeries to save his life. One radical surgery removed half his neck muscles and lymph nodes, and half of his tongue. Von Behrens first tried spit tobacco at age 13 to “fit in.” By age 17, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma.
A hidden epidemic
“I’m tired of hearing about cigarettes,” said Garagiola, who lives in Phoenix. “The hidden epidemic is spit tobacco. Smoking gets all the publicity. It’s not right. The result is the same. You’re going to die.”
NSTEP was founded in 1994 as an effort to educate the baseball family and the American public about the dangers of smokeless or spit tobacco, and break the long-standing link between the potentially deadly drug and America’s pastime. Each year, anywhere from 10 to 16 million Americans put their health at risk by using spit tobacco products. Visit the NSTEP Web site.