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Knudson: Tony Gwynn's Higher Calling

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
February 16, 2012

Sorry, cancer, you can’t have Tony Gwynn. He still has work to do here.

By all accounts, Gwynn’s second bout with mouth cancer has him ahead on points, and looking for a TKO. The doctors who performed 14 hours of surgery this week on the MLB Hall of Famer/San Diego State baseball coach say they were able to remove all of the cancerous growth from the parotid gland inside his right cheek. The cancer is gone and Gwynn has reportedly lost none of the facial functions that were in great danger before the operation began, thanks to a delicate nerve transplant that was done during the same operation.  

Any way you look at it, these doctors seem to have done an amazing job. Certainly everyone who knows and admires Tony Gwynn is grateful for their work. Imagine a world without Gwynn being able to talk and smile. I shudder at the thought.

He’s no rapper, but Tony Gwynn is the epitome of Aztec Pride. We’ll find out shortly how Gwynn’s absence from the SDSU dugout will affect his 2012 version of the baseball Aztecs. San Diego State opens the baseball season this weekend, hosting the University of Washington. These Aztecs are a sophomore-dominated team and bring a bit more experience to the field than last year’s green group. Can they handle the emotional roller coaster that has accompanied their coach’s second battle with the killer disease?

TBD for sure, but it’s a good bet that the good news surrounding the surgery will serve as an inspiration for a team expected to contend for a Conference title this season. Gwynn is expected to be back in the dugout – sans Copenhagen – in roughly one month.

As he recovers, you can bet Tony will be thinking long and hard about how this happened to him and what he can now do to help others avoid a similar fate. He’s already come out publicly and stated that his three decade-long use of smokeless tobacco inside his right cheek was the unquestioned cause of his cancer. Even though one of the doctors who treated Gwynn back in August of 2010 shockingly said there was no proof that “dipping” had led to the cancer, Gwynn – to his massive credit – put full blame on his use of tobacco products. “I’m addicted,” he’s stated previously.

This is important because even in retirement Tony Gwynn remains a powerful role model. He can now join forces with people like Joe Garagiola, who has been fighting against the use of smokeless tobacco products for many years. Words that accompany his actions will be a powerful weapon in the fight. Even during my 12-year playing career, I never dipped, so I can’t relate to what Gwynn or anyone else who’s trying to quit is going through (sunflower seeds don’t count). I do know, however, that being addicted to anything is a life-long affliction.

There is no such thing as a former addict. Gwynn will remain addicted to smokeless tobacco the rest of his life. But he’s done the exact right thing in order to fight that addiction. He hasn’t tried to go cold turkey and simply quit dipping. The great majority of people who do that fail and end up going back to the addictive behavior. Instead, Gwynn found a substitute in the form of a synthetic, doctor-approved dip that doesn’t taste too great but satisfies the craving without being harmful.

Experts will tell you that you don’t stop an addictive behavior - you replace it.  Picture (okay, go to You Tube) the late actor Telly Savalas on the 1970s TV show Kojak sucking on lollipops all the time as he tried to quit smoking cigarettes.

Perhaps Tony can become a spokesman for the synthetic dip and even convince the tobacco companies to turn in that direction. No telling how many young people he can influence and ultimately save from the horrors of smokeless tobacco.

That could be Tony Gwynn’s biggest hit of all.
See all of Mark Knudson's blog entries HERE.