Will baseball get rid of spitting?
A sign announces that Phillies Florida Operations and Spectrum Field, spring training home of the Philadelphia Phillies, have been shut down on May 20, 2020 in Clearwater, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Is it even baseball if there’s no spitting?
As the MLB tries to put together a new safety plan to bring the national pastime back while preventing the spread of coronavirus, spitting may be one of the game’s traditions that suddenly becomes a no-no.
“Wait, what?” Rockies star Charlie Blackmon told Sports Illustrated. “I’m 100 percent gonna spit. That’s ingrained in my playing the game. Whether or not I’m dipping or chewing gum, I’m still gonna spit. I have to occupy my mind. It’s like putting things on autopilot.”
The proposed ban on spitting, as well as high-fives and clubhouse showers has taken a backseat to the fight over money currently playing out between the owners and the players in a bid to start the season.
It is currently unknown how the MLB plans to police spitting. The Korean Baseball Organization, which recently began its season without fans, already banned the act. Players there, like in the U.S., have also been caught off-guard by the rule, but so far there have been no reported incidents stemming from it.
“I want someone to find me a game in history where baseball players did not spit on the field,” Dan Straily, a pitcher for the KBO’s Lotte Giants who played for six MLB teams in eight years, told NPR in April.
That’s probably unlikely.
Whether it’s sunflower seeds or chewing tobacco — both of which would be struck out under MLB’s proposal — baseball players have spit for centuries. In the 1800s, players chewed tobacco in order to “stimulate their saliva on dusty fields and moisten their gloves,” as detailed by CBS in 2014.
Chewing tobacco might not be as common nowadays, thanks to a 2011 CBA limit on it, but spitting certainly is.
“If I’m spitting, I don’t remember spitting,” Braves pitcher Josh Tomlin told SI.