Cigarettes and Tobacco News

Mar 26, 2006 -- JUPITER — Every morning before his spring training workouts, Marlins pitcher Scott Olsen wakes up and reaches for his pack of Parliaments.

"First thing in the morning, I have one," he said. "Some guys drink coffee. I smoke a cigarette."

Olsen said he smokes about six cigarettes a day, down from his pack-a-day habit that started when he was an All-America high school star who quickly advanced through the Marlins' minor-league system.

Now the 22-year-old left-hander has two goals to reach by the end of camp — win a spot on the Marlins' roster and quit smoking.

"It's never bothered me," Olsen said of his smoking. "It's never affected my running. It's never affected how late I can go into the game. Then again, I'm still 22. So in 10 years it probably would affect my running and throwing, so I'd just like to knock it out now."

By national standards, Olsen isn't a chronic smoker. But in an era in which athletes take great pains to take care of their bodies so they can sign six- and seven-figure contracts, his habit sticks out like a beer belly.

"Here you have guys trying to get in tiptop shape. You just don't connect cigarettes and athletes together," said veteran Marlins pitcher Brian Moehler, a nonsmoker. "You just don't see an athlete being a smoker. It's shocking when you do."

Once upon a time in baseball, cigarettes were as common in clubhouses as bats and gloves.

Today, despite efforts to educate players about the dangers of tobacco, they are more likely to chew it than they are to smoke it.

"There are a lot of guys who dip and when you see someone dipping on a baseball field, you just don't think anything of it," Moehler said. "But (smoking) is the same thing."

Exactly how many major-leaguers smoke and how often they light up isn't known. But the most recent study on smokeless tobacco use among baseball players offers a glimpse into their smoking habits.

A team of researchers dispatched to major-league spring training clubhouses from 1998 to 2003 found that about 36 percent of the players dipped Skoal, Copenhagen and other smokeless tobaccos at least once a week through those six years.

Players also were asked if they had smoked cigarettes or cigars at least once a month. In 1998, 312 players said they'd smoked, about 14.4 percent of the respondents, compared to 136 players in 2003, about 10.3 percent.

"A lot of players realize (smoking) isn't going to do you any good, but they're young, they're nervous. They figure they can quit any time," said Dr. Herbert Severson of the Oregon Research Institute, which conducted the study for the dental group Oral Health America's "National Spit Tobacco Education Program."

"It's an anxiety-reducer. It's a habit they develop independent of baseball."

Although the NSTEP study focused on smokeless tobacco, Severson said it's still the most comprehensive one ever done on the smoking habits of players.

And conducting it wasn't easy.

Some surveys weren't returned and not all teams allowed access to their players. "We had some trainers who refused to do it," Severson said.

"What goes on in the clubhouse is pretty guarded. It's a very closed group and they don't really want negative publicity about substance abuse, including tobacco."

Tobacco has been a part of baseball since the early days of the game. Before trading cards were packaged with bubble gum, they first were inserted into packages of Piedmont or Sweet Caporal cigarettes.

That's because many players, including early stars such as Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig, smoked and endorsed brands.

"Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Cochrane and Dizzy Dean — all of them smoked. I'd say most everybody smoked in those days," said Vero Beach resident Elden Auker, who pitched for the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Browns from 1933 to 1942.

"We didn't know it did any damage to the lungs or anything. There was no medical information in those days. Everybody smoked. It was the in thing to do."

The last living pitcher to give up a home run to Babe Ruth, Auker, 95, said he didn't start smoking until three years into his career with Detroit, when he started rooming with pitcher Tommy Bridges.

"He came from Tennessee and his uncle owned a tobacco warehouse where they auctioned off tobacco. He was a heavy smoker. I roomed with him and I started smoking," he said.

Auker made a name for himself pitching in the 1934 and '35 World Series. Soon he got an endorsement deal with Camel.

"They'd send me cartons, but they burned my throat. So I used to take them over to the local grocery store and I'd trade them for Lucky Strikes," he said with a laugh.

At least, Auker said, he never smoked during games in which he played. Not every player of that era could say the same.

Dom DiMaggio remembers the runway from the clubhouse to the dugout at Fenway Park being "littered with butts.''

"Everybody had their favorite spot,'' said DiMaggio, a Boston Red Sox outfielder from 1940 to '53. "We had urinals and pipes (behind the dugout) and everybody had their cigarettes in different areas. We'd come in off the field (in between innings), have a couple of puffs and put it back."

DiMaggio, who now lives in Ocean Ridge, doesn't remember his brother Vince ever lighting up in the majors, but as for his other brother, the famous one?

"Joe did... about a pack a day," he said.

There's no definitive data tracking the historical trends of players and cigarette smoking. But Severson believes more and more players began kicking the habit after the 1964 Surgeon General's report that first recognized cigarette smoking as a cause of cancer and other serious diseases.

Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer remembers two Orioles teammates, shortstop Mark Belanger and pitcher Dave McNally, smoking on team charters in the 1960s and '70s. Both Belanger and McNally died of lung cancer.

"They were all heavy smokers," said Palmer, who said he never lit up. "Looking back, I would have loved to be able to maintain friendships with those guys.''

Dave Cash, who played second base for Philadelphia from 1974 to '76, said he smoked on the bench with Phillies manager Danny Ozark.

"I smoked five years into my career and all of sudden it caught up to me. After awhile when you're playing you get winded. I quit," said Cash, now the Orioles' first-base coach.

Mets pitcher Tom Glavine said lots of players were smoking when he broke into the major leagues with Atlanta in 1987.

"I don't want to say it was common, but it certainly wasn't uncommon. In the clubhouse, in dugouts, the plane, it was everywhere, part of that generation," he said.

Moehler remembers walking into the Tigers' weight room during spring training one day in 1994 and seeing a cloud of smoke around outfielder Mickey Tettleton.

"He was sitting there doing curls with a bar and he's got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth," Moehler said. "In the weight room, smoking while he's doing curls.''

While cigarette smoking declined through the last three decades, Severson said the use of smokeless tobacco rose sharply when companies began marketing their products to players starting in the 1970s.

Unfortunately, he said, smokeless use hasn't waned much through the years, although minor-leaguers dip less often than big-leaguers.

"I was in Arizona three years ago. They were putting brandy and whiskey into their Copenhagen and letting it sit to ferment so it was stronger," Severson said. "This was in the clubhouse and certain coaches knew it was there. It was kind of frustrating."

Cigarettes began to all but disappear from the baseball culture with the rise of laws that banned smoking on planes, in restaurants and other public places.

"There seemed to be an effort in the early '90s to kind of do away with it,'' Glavine said. "You were seeing guys get in trouble or talked to if they were seen smoking on TV.''

Despite anti-smoking campaigns that arose from the recent tobacco settlements, 32.4 percent of males between the ages of 18 and 24 in the United States smoked, according to a 2002 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"There's a certain amount of peer pressure, so your environment can dictate it, too," Marlins trainer Sean Cunningham said.

Olsen said he got started five years ago at Crystal Lake South High School in Illinois.

"It was a high school friend of mine," Olsen said. "He was in a class that was before our lunch break. When we were juniors, we were able to leave campus and go out to lunch and he'd always have a cigarette in the car. I'd have one with him.

"Then in the winter at parties, you can't smoke in someone's house. You've got to have a little company outside, so he dragged me out there and I ended up having a couple more. I started buying my own and it was downhill from there."

By the time he was drafted in the sixth round in 2002, Olsen said he was a pack-a-day smoker. But it didn't prevent him from putting up numbers that prompted the Marlins to call him up last summer.

Cunningham said he remembers seeing the young pitcher walk out of the team hotel in St. Petersburg with a lit cigarette last June 25, the day of Olsen's major-league debut against the Devil Rays.

"Initially I didn't even know he smoked," Cunningham said. "Then you see him smoke and it's like, 'Wow, how do you like that?' "

Olsen struck out seven and allowed two runs in 5 2/3 innings to earn the win against Tampa Bay. Cunningham and team officials began speaking to him about the dangers of smoking.

The Marlins do not have a policy about smoking, partly because smoking isn't something that team officials expect to be an issue with young athletes.

"We're not going to make him stop," Cunningham said of Olsen. "I'm not capable of doing that, nor is anyone else here. But hopefully what you do is you can educate them as to how it can negatively affect your condition."

Considering that he will make $327,000 if he makes the team, Olsen knows there's a lot more money at stake in the future. So he's trying to quit smoking.

Through the past winter, he said, he made sure to keep cigarettes out of his car to reduce his chances of lighting up while on the road.

"Quitting is a process,'' Olsen said. "It's gradual. I'm limiting it to six a day — after meals, before you go to bed, whenever you get up."

Auker said he isn't surprised to hear that there are young players still smoking today.

"I smoked about seven years," he said, meaning he quit around 1940. "If I'd continued smoking I wouldn't have lived to be 95 years old."

Cunningham said he doesn't know of any other smokers among the Marlins, but he hopes smokers like Olsen realize the consequences.

"Players have a certain feeling of invulnerability,'' Cunningham said. "But the bottom line is children are emulating major-league players. Is that a behavior that we want to be emulated?"