BALLPLAYERS' `SPIT TOBACCO' PENALTY

Mouth lesions found in 83 of 141 tested

A retired dental school dean who examined 141 Major League baseball players
using smokeless tobacco has detected lesions that could turn cancerous in
the mouths of more than half the players, he said yesterday.

Fifteen of those lesions were so serious that Dr. John Greene, dean
emeritus of the dental school at the University of California at San
Francisco, recommended that the players undergo biopsies to see if surgery
is needed, he said.

A lifelong baseball fan whose father played semi-pro ball, Greene now is
making Major League players face reality: the smokeless tobacco that some
of them regularly use can kill them, whether they chew tobacco or dip
snuff.

With the help of the owners of Major League teams during spring training
last month, Greene examined 141 players -- all of whom either chewed or
dipped regularly -- and found that 83 had developed soft-tissue lesions
caused by the tobacco in their mouths. In the 15 most serious cases, Greene
warned the players that the cells were already becoming disorganized in a
way that might indicate oncoming cancer.

Officials of Major League Baseball and the players union agreed to
cooperate in the effort last fall as the National Spit Tobacco Education
Program sought role models for the program's efforts to dissuade young
people from using smokeless tobacco.

Greene told The Chronicle yesterday that he and former major leaguer Joe
Garagiola worked together in March to visit nine teams this spring and will
cover the other 21 during the next two years. Garagiola, one-time catcher
for the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Giants, heads the
anti-spit-tobacco campaign.

And what has made the players sit up and listen, Greene said, has been the
fact that he found a serious white lesion called cellular dysplasia in the
mouth of Phillies ace pitcher Curt Schilling, who had been dipping snuff
since high school. Greene urged Schilling to obtain a biopsy and stop using
the stuff immediately.

``There would be a real probability,'' Greene said he told Schilling,
``that if he continued, he would surely develop oral cancer -- a squamous
cell carcinoma.''

Greene recommended Dr. Margaret Welsh, a behavior modification specialist
at UCSF, as a counselor for Schilling. The pitcher took the advice, worked
with her and is using a nicotine patch to help him quit after using snuff
for 15 years, Greene said. In talking with the players, he said, he has
cited the example of Bob Leslie, a baseball coach at Casa Grande High
School in Petaluma who had oral cancer and is now disabled after major
surgery. Leslie had to stop coaching last fall. He chewed tobacco regularly
from the age of 13 until he was diagnosed with melanoma in his mouth at 27,
Greene said.

As for the Major League ball players whose lesions are still not severe,
Greene said, ``while they're not as far advanced clinically, I've told each
of them that your lesions will most likely disappear if you quit now. But
if you don't quit, they're going to get worse, so let your coach and your
trainer know what's happening and stop now.''

Greene said he began his own campaign to stop the use of smokeless tobacco
after the surgeon general's report indicting the products in 1986. At that
time Greene started talking to Giants players, then conducted a study of
Cactus League players.

Until recently, he said, he was dismayed to learn that most players just
wouldn't quit even after they learned the dangers and that even today
surveys show that 35 to 40 percent of all Major League players either chew
tobacco or dip snuff, while 29 percent of minor league players do the same.
``But the players have the word now,'' he said, ``and I think they're
really frightened.''

)1998 San Francisco Chronicle