"They're trying to put on a good face for the kids, and having a player walk around with a big chunk in his cheek isn't the image they want," he says. "You don't see that much anymore."
Instead, ballplayers pack their cheeks with sunflower seeds -- a nutritious food that's high in vitamin E and contains no sugar, unlike bubble gum, and no cholesterol. But chewing seeds isn't about food value, not in baseball.
A sunflower seed shortage means baseball players may be spitting less.
(David Carson -- AP)
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A game of rituals, gestures and posturing, baseball is fertile ground for the seeds. "Spitting and chewing and scratching, all of that is part of baseball," says Klein. "If you're ever in the dugout, they are up to their ankles in shells and these guys are spitting them out like machine guns."
There's even an admired technique: First, load a handful of seeds into the cheek. Then move one at a time to the front teeth to crack the shell at its seams. Extract the tasty kernel and eat it. Finally, spit out the shell.
"Some of these guys really have made it a competitive sport. It takes a little skill. You have to practice," says Klein.
And, hey, it's something to do in a game known for nervous energy and downtime, says McLean High pitcher Mills. "It's better than nail-biting."
Mike Wallace, the Washington Nationals equipment and clubhouse manager, says lots of players chew them just to pass the time and keep themselves busy.
"Any of the areas where the players are, you see seeds being consumed," says Wallace, who will oversee cleaning up piles of shells from the dugouts and bullpens at RFK Stadium after tonight's home opener. "Some of the guys will get bored and see if they can flick them and hit the third base coach or first base coach from the dugouts."
Such sunflower seed lore makes the shortage hard to digest for some.
"Great Scott!" says Ted Spencer, the chief curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, who was unaware of the scarcity.
Seeds are now so much a part of the old ballgame, he says, that they are about to be inducted, so to speak, into the Hall of Fame. When the newly renovated "Today's Game" exhibit opens next month, it will display a locker room with current uniforms and artifacts -- including buckets of David Sunflower Seeds. "These are the things you'd see lying around any locker room and dugout in baseball," says Spencer.
But is the dearth cause for a congressional hearing, where cheek-loaded ballplayers testify about their need for seed?
Larry Kleingartner would welcome it. "Absolutely. We'd be at the front table with all those baseball guys," says the executive director of the National Sunflower Association.
Not that chewing seeds is Fifth Amendment material or gives a competitive edge. Kleingartner just wants to find out why funding earmarked to stop that white-mold disease, also known as sclerotinia head rot, got cut from the federal budget. He doesn't even want to think about sunflower seeds running out.
"Baseball, apple pie and motherhood," he says. "And sunflower seeds. . . . We hope to get them all the seeds they can chew on next year."
