Joe Garagiola walked into the Giants' clubhouse, sat next to Willie Mays and reminisced about baseball in the 1950s. Garagiola's final weeks as a player were as a rarely used catcher on the '54 Giants, who swept Cleveland in the World Series.
Garagiola told a story, and Mays laughed.
Mays told a story, and Garagiola laughed.
They combined on a few stories, and everyone in the vicinity laughed.
Then Garagiola, as he often does, turned the conversation to his fight against the use of smokeless tobacco, and nobody laughed.
"Here's the guy you should emulate," Garagiola said, his voice rising as he points to Mays. "They threw the ball, he hit it. They hit the ball, he caught it. That's Willie Mays' great theory on baseball. Emulate him, not some guy who has tobacco in his back pocket. Kids see that."
Garagiola, 86 and six years older than Mays, has spent much of his life talking to players about the hazards of chewing tobacco, testifying before Congress and state legislatures and citing horrid examples of the deadly effects of tobacco use.
Major League Baseball and the players' union finally budged, albeit an inch. As part of the new collective bargaining agreement, players cannot go on the field carrying tobacco tins (often noticed in back pockets) or pouches in their uniforms, or be seen using tobacco in interviews.
The regulations, which certainly are being overlooked in spring training, are cosmetic - Garagiola wants tobacco banned; no use at all on the field - but at least they're a start, he admitted.
"I like it," Garagiola said. "But it's like blaming the Johnstown Flood on a leaky faucet, for goodness sake. Why don't you just let a ballplayer smoke a cigarette in the on-deck circle? What's this going to do? What the hell's the difference? They chew it all the time. What I'm trying to do is get it kicked out."
Tobacco is banned in the minors. Minor-leaguers have no union, and the commissioner's office implemented a no-tobacco rule, but don't tell Garagiola that minor-leaguers don't dip or chew.
"That's the worst myth in the world," he said. "They put sunflower seeds in there, mix it in with tobacco and spit sunflower seeds."
Back in the day, Garagiola was a tobacco user. He quit after his grade-school daughter asked if he was going to die from cancer. The other day, he vowed to thank Giants manager Bruce Bochy for recently telling his how-I-quit-tobacco story to The Chronicle's Gwen Knapp.
"What you need is more things like that," Garagiola said. "What Bochy did, that's more than a story, believe me."
Garagiola wants players to come out against tobacco use and eventually agree to have it banned, but he's getting little support. An Arizona resident, he said whenever he walks into the Diamondbacks' clubhouse, players scatter, knowing what message he's about to deliver, knowing they don't want to be told to kick the habit.
"One guy, I told him, 'You put that tin in your back pocket, you think you're tough. You think you're macho. John Wayne. That's bull. Don't do it for yourself. Do it for your family,' " Garagiola said. "All these guys say, 'Oh, when I get out of the game or when my kids grow up, I'm going to quit.' I say, 'Oh, really? When did you get that contract from God?' "
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