Here’s something I was wondering about while watching the Yankees-Mets game over the weekend. Why do baseball players spit? Now I know that some do because they chew tobacco, a pretty disgusting habit, but I see so many others who are not chewing that are spitting too. And it’s not just the little type of spit either. These are good, sizable gobs. Me, I can barely get anything out even after trying really hard and when I do spit, it sometimes never leaves my mouth properly and causes a mess!
Is is that they are trying to dehydrate themselves like wrestlers, or is it something they are being given to drink in the dugout which causes this, or is it the very act of playing baseball, as opposed to me working in an office, or is it just an acquired habit they learned on the way up to the big leagues?
What you are seeing most of them spit is sunflower seeds. There are always buckets of them in the dugout. It gives the players something to do while they wait to bat…absorb some of that nervous energy.
The entire reason for baseball is so that grown men can do all the things their mothers told them not to do – spit, slide around in the dirt, a scratch their privates in public – and get paid for it.
We have the same thing in football (soccer to some of you). You can bet your bottom dollar that when the camera zooms in on a close-up of a footballer he’ll be almost certainly spitting. I think it’s just become a habit, I’m almost sure it never used to happen when I watched games many years ago. Now they nearly all do it. In the just finished Euro 2004 competition one of the goalies was spitting into his gloves while waiting to try to save a penalty. Perhaps he was hoping the ball would stick to his gloves or something!
Baseball players (and other athletes) spit sunflower seeds, tobacco, or just regular spit.
When I played hockey, spitting was pretty common too. If you got a bunch of mucus in the back of your throat you’d hock it up and spit on to the ice. This would be worse if someone had a cold.
People would also take a swig from the water bottle and rather than swallow it, spit it on to the ice (don’t get waterlogged that way). This is true for other sports too. However, I’ve only seen it done in sports that are played on a surface that will absorb the spit. So grass (football, baseball), and hockey (ice) is OK; basketball (and roller hockey) are not OK.
Looking at that, it really doesn’t make any sense why athletes in baseball, football, and hockey would spit, but basketball players don’t, other than we spit, because we can.