(CNN) — A group of senators is urging Major League Baseball to use the World Series as a chance to step up and change a fairly recognizable scene at baseball stadiums: a group of players in the dugout chomping on chew and spitting tobacco juice.
Not only is it unhealthy, the senators said, but it sends the wrong message to children who look up to the players.
“An expected 15 million viewers, including many children, will tune in to watch the first game of the series,” Sen. Dick Durbin and other senators said in a letter to the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. “Unfortunately, as these young fans root for their favorite team and players, they also will watch their on-field heroes use smokeless tobacco products.”
It’s a scene that’s caught often on TV, as a camera pans the field during batting practice or the dugout during the game: Some players chew gum, others spit out sunflower seed shells, and others spit out tobacco juice. With the first game of the World Series set for Wednesday night, the senators are trying to use that national platform to urge players to opt for the sunflower seeds rather than the tobacco.
Sens. Durbin, Frank Lautenberg, Richard Blumenthal and Tom Harkin, who is the Senate Health Committee chairman, said the World Series is such a big stage that it would be a good opportunity to right a wrong as well as set a good example.
The senators cited the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which showed a 36% increase in use of smokeless tobacco products among boys in high school since 2003. The survey also showed that 15% of high school boys now use the products.
“When players use smokeless tobacco, they endanger not only their own health, but also the health of millions of children who follow their example,” they said in a letter.
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, echoed that sentiment wholeheartedly.
“Major League Baseball and the players union should follow the senators’ leadership and get smokeless tobacco out of the game,” Myers said in a press release. “The calls for tobacco-free baseball have come from hundreds of diverse voices that have grown louder over the course of the 2011 season. Now it is time for baseball to act to protect the health of current players and millions of kids who look up to them.”
The senators had earlier in the year petitioned MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to ban tobacco in the major leagues, as the minor leagues already have.
“It is time for the players to take the lead and support extending this policy throughout MLB,” the senators wrote.
Selig has said that he intends to propose the ban as a part of the players’ new contracts next year.
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