THE STEW OVER CHEW : IF YOU CHOOSE TO CHEW YOU LOSE.

Byline: George Diaz Orlando Sentinel

The right side of his face is an unsightly mass of discolored flesh, scarred from the top of his head down to his jaw. Bits and pieces borrowed from other body parts have been stitched together by surgeons trying to reconstruct a face.

His cheekbone comes from a skull muscle that has been twisted around at an 180-degree angle. His jawbone comes from a leg. His cheek was created from two slabs of meat from his neck. Doctors have cut out part of the right side of a breast to cover his neck. A lumpy clump of skin forms underneath his right eye.

There have been five major operations lasting a combined 60 hours, in conjunction with 51 radiation treatments. His hearing is impaired. His teeth are missing. He has no feeling on that side of his face.

Bill Tuttle looks at the attentive eyes in the Florida Marlins' clubhouse. A few players are fighting back tears, wondering whether this is a sneak preview of their baseball legacy.

``If you choose to chew,'' he said, ``this can happen to you.''

This is the devastating downside of a distinctive pttttt that is one of the defining rituals of spring and summer throughout ballparks in America. Too many hot dogs, peanuts and Cracker Jacks might give you indigestion. Too many chews or dips might give you cancer.

Despite the risks, an estimated 40 percent of major-league baseball players continue to chew or dip tobacco. It can begin as an innocent rite of passage; a means of relaxing during a long stretch of exhibition, regular-season and playoff games lasting almost eight months.

Baseball's infatuation with chewing tobacco dates back decades, when baseball cards were used as advertisements for tobacco. New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth accepted a plug of chew from his girlfriend before a climactic game-winning hit in a 1927 movie, ``Babe Comes Home.''

Hitting star Rod Carew would stick a big chew in his mouth to tighten his face and help him focus on the incoming pitch. Travis Fryman of the Detroit Tigers started chewing because he saw Kansas City Royals All-Star George Brett doing it and ``I thought it looked cool.'' Jeff Bagwell of the Houston Astros used to hit with a chew in his mouth because it's ``something that takes your mind off other things.''

Chewing and dipping can have a superstitious slant, or simply a whimsical one: ``Rally'' dips. Spitting on another player's shoe. Sticking a wad on top of the dugout and watching it drip down to gross out teammates. Spitting at ants in the dugout or bullpen.

``It just seems natural when you're playing baseball,'' said Gary Sheffield of the Florida Marlins, whose ritual includes dipping his dip in Kahlua.

Tuttle and other oral cancer victims who blame chewing tobacco for their misery are trying to change that feel-good perception entwined in baseball's ritualistic fabric.

With broadcaster Joe Garagiola and cancer specialists, Tuttle tours major- and minor-league facilities during spring training, trying to make others curb the nasty habit.

The tour is one of the focal points of the anti-chewing campaign of the National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP). Garagiola got involved because a good friend, Jack Krol, died of cancer after prolonged chewing, dipping and smoking. Although Garagiola comes armed with posters and damning statistical evidence, the most poignant message is delivered by the disconcerting profile of Tuttle's face.

Now 68, Tuttle began chewing in 1955, when he played center field with the Detroit Tigers. After twisting an ankle while sliding into third, Tuttle took a seat in the dugout next to teammate Harvey Kuenn, who had a pinch of tobacco in his cheek.

Tuttle asked Kuenn for a sample. Three days later, he bought his first pack of smokeless tobacco. Tuttle would chew for the next 37-1/2 years, until a checkup for what he thought was a nasty canker sore revealed a cancerous tumor. He would spend 13 hours in the operating room, where doctors removed one of the largest tumors they had claimed to have seen.

There would be four more operations, punctuated by more pain and misery. Milk running through Tuttle's nose. Water dribbling down his chin. Feedings through a tube in his stomach. After his fifth operation, he wrote his wife, Gloria, a note, insisting he would rather die than go under the knife again. Tuttle still is undergoing chemotherapy.

``The horror and the hell that he has gone through,'' Gloria Tuttle tells the Marlins, ``because of a habit that has completely destroyed his life.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Former Kansas City Royals star George Brett slaps in a big chaw of tobacco during down time on bench.

(2) Lenny Dykstra of the Phillies bolts down the baseline with chaw secured safely under his cheek.

Associated Press