Sport History Review, 2007, 38, 121-133 © 2007 Human Kinetics, Inc.

“Satisfiers,” Smokes, and Sports: The Unholy Marriage Between Major League Baseball and Big

Alexis Smith Stanford University

Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, : some of America’s greatest baseball legends. All played in the Major Leagues, all used tobacco products, all advertised tobacco, and it is likely that all died from diseases related to tobacco usage.1 The fact that Big Tobacco utilized baseball to advertise its goods should not come as a surprise, given the sophistication and prevalence of tobacco advertising in American popular culture. The influence of Big Tobacco extends beyond the arena of profes- sional sports. Hollywood cinema, in particular, popularized smoking among both men and women, using the silver screen to simultaneously normalize and roman- ticize smoking. Whereas dramas and comedies exploited smoking as symbol of class and sophistication, westerns and war films cast tobacco usage as a rugged and masculine pastime.2 Big Tobacco capitalized on these cinematic themes, applying similar rhetorical strategies to advertise their products to athletes and sports fans. As Tony Collins and Wray Vamplew highlight in Mud, Sweat and Beers: A Cul- tural History of Sport and Alcohol, the themes of irreverence and masculinity were essential components of the success of tobacco and alcohol marketing in sports.3 Although ample scholarship has been published about the impact of Big Tobacco on athletic advertising in general, scholars have yet to expose the blatant tactics employed by the to sell their products specifically to baseball players and their fans, despite evidence of the insalubrious effects of tobacco use. Even more astonishing is the public silence of Major League Baseball, which for decades allowed tobacco companies to use America’s favorite pastime to advertise and smokeless tobacco. Who, though, is to blame for this unhealthy embrace—the tobacco industry alone, or the baseball players and their institutional representatives? The tobacco industry is often personified as an omnipotent juggernaut that victimizes everyone in its path. What I hope to show here, however, is that Major League Baseball is equally to blame for its unquestioned alliance with tobacco companies. The profitable collusion between Big Tobacco and Major League Baseball is a deadly embrace that has killed thousands of players and fans since the sport was invented over a century ago.

Smith is with the History Dept., Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

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The purpose of this article is to explore the premeditated complicity between Major League Baseball and the tobacco industry as revealed through the tobacco industry’s internal documents released in litigation. For convenience of analysis, I have divided my topic into three chronological categories: 1876 to 1920, 1920 to 1959, and 1959 to 2006. We begin by looking at the birth of the baseball–tobacco alliance between 1876 and 1920. Next, we turn to the use of the flagrant advertising schemes of the “golden era” of the baseball–tobacco partnership, from 1920 to 1959. Finally, we examine the impact of the health scares of the 1950s on the substance and rhetoric of advertisements. How has the baseball–tobacco collusion reinvented itself over time to adjust to increasing medical and social disapproval of smoking? How has the tobacco industry designed its products to appeal specifi- cally to baseball players and fans? How has tobacco, the world’s number-one cause of preventable death,4 become a seemingly inseparable part of baseball, a lively symbol of American patriotism? Why haven’t more baseball players followed the path of the great (1874–1955), who disassociated himself from the tobacco industry? And finally, to what extent is tobacco usage part of American baseball culture today? The thesis I would like to advance is that despite the public silence of Major League Baseball against Big Tobacco, the century-old collusion between the baseball indus- try and tobacco companies continues to thrive at the expense of both players and fans.

A Long-Term Relationship The , as it is referred to in collectors’ jargon, is the Holy Grail, or Mona Lisa, of baseball cards. Featuring the image of Pittsburg Pirate shortstop Honus Wagner, the card was printed to advertise the 1909 , between the Pittsburg Pirates and the Tigers. Wagner’s card, one of 514 baseball cards from the T206 series, was inserted into cigarette cartons distributed by the American Tobacco Company. The Honus Wagner has always been one of the most expensive baseball cards among collectors. By the 1930s, Wagner cards sold for $50 each—a tremendous value in comparison to the other 513 playing cards from the T206 series, which appraised for only 50 cents apiece. Today, there are only four copies of the elusive Honus Wagner card, one of which was auctioned for over $1.26 million in the year 2000.5 Why is the Honus Wagner card so expensive? In 1911, Wagner revoked his contract with American Tobacco Company, fearing that the “circulation of his card . . . would influence children to purchase tobacco products.”6 This was the first time (and one of the only times) a baseball player publicly questioned and rejected the baseball–tobacco alliance. The extraordinary value of the Honus Wagner card can be attributed directly to Wagner’s historic confrontation with the tobacco industry. The T206 is significant not only because of Wagner’s antitobacco stance, but also because it demonstrates the depth of the alliance between the tobacco industry and baseball. Professional baseball officially began with founding of the National Baseball League in 1876.7 Only several years hence, tobacco manufacturers began printing baseball cards to insert into cigarette cartons. Some of these cards fea- tured portraits of players like Honus Wagner with the name of the cigarette brands printed on the back of the card along with the name of the player and his team. Other playing cards featured baseball-related cartoons encouraging fans to smoke