To encourage the baseball players to chew tobacco, manufacturers provided free samples to college and professional teams. This was obviously quite successful. A 1985 survey of college baseball players found that 40 percent used smokeless tobacco regularly. Only 3 percent smoked cigarettes. It is not, of course.
Smokeless tobacco is at least as harmful as cigarettes.
He died in 1948, at age 52, of an oropharyngeal tumor. The vast majority of such tumors are due to the use of tobacco. Manufacturers continue to target baseball players to hype their nasty product, because of its tradition appeal, and also because there is no other major sport where their product could be used during competition.