HIGH SCHOOLS TRYING TO SPIT OUT TOBACCO JUICE FOR GOOD.

Byline: Richard Obert Arizona Republic

After every game, coach Michael Johnson sweeps up sunflower-seed shells that litter Chandler High School's baseball dugout. He doesn't mind the chore. It beats mopping up tobacco juice.

Johnson is among several high school coaches who are trying to wipe out spit from their programs. Bubble gum and sunflower seeds are cool. But tobacco is out. It has been for some time.

If a player is caught with a pinch in his mouth, he must serve a one-game suspension, under Arizona Interscholastic Association rules. Umpires are supposed to enforce it. Coaches are supposed to keep it from happening.

The AIA began prohibiting the substance about four years ago, but only in the past year or so have umps and coaches really cracked down.

``Here, it's pretty well nipped,'' Johnson said. ``We talk about it with our players, the effects it has on you.''

Johnson should know. He said he chewed for seven years, beginning in high school and through his college years at Gonzaga and Grand Canyon University in the early 1980s. He wrote his master's paper on the harmful effects of smokeless tobacco. That research, he said, led him stop his habit and start educating youngsters against it. Johnson said his heart would race when he chewed, but the buzz and the addiction to nicotine kept him from quitting.

``My blood pressure was something like 160 over 95 when I was chewing,'' he said. ``Now it's about 110 over 70. High blood pressure is a common effect. I've seen players on the stuff have to stop playing, because they thought they were having a heart attack.''

Johnson said it took him two years to quit.

``It was a very slow process,'' he said. ``I made up my mind not to do it. I would try something not as strong, but I couldn't do it. I'd go back to the stronger stuff.

``The problem was that I hung around people who were doing it. I'd be bumming chew off them.''

It wasn't until Johnson broke away from those friends who chewed that he was able to stop.

``If it wasn't for that college paper, doing that research, finding out all the horrible things caused by it, I'd probably still be doing it,'' Johnson said. ``I just know this is something I won't put up with at Chandler.''

Although it might not be as prevalent as it used to be, smokeless tobacco on the high-school level is a major problem, says Joe Garagiola, who campaigns against the substance.

Garagiola said statistics indicate that 10 percent of the high school population in Arizona used smokeless tobacco in 1995. That's startling to Garagiola and the school officials who bring in the former major-league player and NBC broadcaster to speak at their schools.

Joe Pico, athletic director of Gilbert high schools, said, ``Now, you see a lot of sunflower seeds, thank God. The youth are getting the message. I think the cancer scare has reached a few of them.''

But not enough, Garagiola believes. Garagiola, who lives in Paradise Valley, talks to everybody, from pro players to high schoolers to Little Leaguers, about the harmful effects.

His message gets out loud and clear with the use of graphic photographs of distorted jaws, eaten away by cancer. He takes victims on his circuit to emphasize his point.

``I don't know why anyone does it,'' Garagiola said. ``Peer pressure is one of the big things. They think it's cool to use and not cool not to use.''

Garagiola said he believes Major League Baseball is starting to clean up its image on tobacco. Dodgers center fielder Brett Butler did much to decrease the use. Butler, who used smokeless tobacco for a while in his career, battled back from throat cancer last summer.

``No question, we had the cleanest World Series last year as far as tobacco,'' Garagiola. ``You didn't see the constant spitting, putting the stuff in their mouths. They're trying to clean it up.''

Paradise Valley coach Roy Muller said smokeless tobacco was prevalent when he played in high school and college in the 1970s. Everybody, it seemed, was chewing, even girls.

``I remember one time in high school, playing in a big game, we had to delay a game while one of our guys, who was supposed to be batting, was bent over behind the dugout, throwing up,'' Muller said. ``He had just swallowed a big wad of tobacco.''

Muller said any player caught using it more than once could be banned from the team.

``We just don't tolerate it,'' Muller said. ``It's a nasty habit. There's nothing positive gained from it. It's not cool. It's messy. It's addicting. It's crazy.''

Gilbert Highland senior catcher Jake Fenton said he never has used it, nor have his friends. And it's not just because his father, Bruce, is a high school umpire who cracks down on the substance use.

``It just never interested me,'' Fenton said. ``I don't need to get high on tobacco juice. This game is enough of a high to me.''

Even the umpires are cleaning up their acts. Bruce Fenton said that any umpire taking the stuff during a game could be banned.

``You'd be so hypocritical if you did take the stuff,'' Bruce Fenton said. ``Umpires are supposed to keep an eye out for it. You take it, you sit. That should be the same policy for umps. If they take it, they shouldn't be umpiring. I'm totally against tobacco.''

But Mesa Dobson coach Scott Morgan said you can't ignore that smokeless tobacco still is being used by high school players, if not in games, then off the field, at parties or even in the classroom.

``It's definitely there,'' Morgan said. ``My kids, from time to time, do it. What we try to do is monitor it at the school. You can't control it off campus. You just tell them the effects it may have on them in the long term. It's hard to control. But you show them the pictures. You show them the deformed jaws, and it gets to some of them. It's not a pretty picture.''