January 4, 2022 – Click here to listen
I met hall of fame pro baseball player Brett Butler some time back and he has a fascinating story of triumph over many obstacles in his life including making it to the major leagues in the first place due to his tiny stature. He played for the Dodgers and later the Atlanta Braves and was an all-star player and won numerous awards throughout his career.
He gave me an autographed copy of his book and it is inspirational. He recounted a story in it where he mentioned that he was at the ballpark one day and observed a young kid putting smokeless tobacco in his mouth. Brett asked the little boy why he was doing that, and he indicated that he did it because Brett did it, and he wanted to be just like him.
Brett stopped using smokeless tobacco right then and there. He really felt bad about this and the last thing he wanted to do was be a bad influence to the little kids who were his fans.
Ironically, Brett Butler went on to develop throat cancer from all those years of using smokeless tobacco. He endured years of painful operations, radiation, and chemo, but eventually, he won that pain-filled battle and was able to not only survive this major threat to his life but thrive.
There is no way of telling how many little kids get started on smokeless tobacco by watching their baseball player heroes use it during televised games, and the Lord only knows how many have gone on to develop cancer from it. I should know because I got started chewing tobacco when I played high school baseball for similar reasons.
All baseball players just naturally chewed tobacco back when I played, and I wasn’t about to be different. It was fortunate for me that I had an unfortunate experience with it because it led me to quit before it became another one of my addictions.
One day I was out in the woods squirrel hunting, and I was chewing a big plug of Red-Man chewing tobacco. My trusty dog Poochie treed a squirrel in a high tree. I circled the tree about ten times looking for the squirrel with my head cocked back and some of the tobacco juice trickled down my throat. I got a scratchy feeling in it and inadvertently coughed and swallowed the entire plug.
It was the size of a plum!
It was not a good feeling and soon I began having cold sweats and a fierce rumbling began deep down in my intestinal tract. I don’t recall ever being that sick. I headed home stopping every fifty feet repeatedly to . . . well, you get the picture.
When I got home and looked in the mirror my face was grey/green. I was not the same for a week, and smokeless tobacco was not a problem for me from that point on.
I know some grown men that still use that mess, and whether they know the danger of what they are doing or not, (or even care), the fact remains that if they continue with it, they almost certainly will ultimately face serious health consequences from it. I would highly recommend reading Brett’s book to anyone that is using these products in order that you might better understand just how devastating having smokeless tobacco-related cancer develop in that area of your body, and how painful the surgery, radiation, and intensive chemotherapy is to treat it.
Health aside I think we should all take a lesson out of Brett’s book on perhaps even a more important issue. Our children are impressionable. How do you act around them? Do you tell them not to drink alcohol as you refill your wine glass? Do you send them to Sunday school with a friend and then sleep in yourself? Do you curse or belittle others around them?
When my precious twins were very young one of them called her sister an “idiot”. Her sister immediately went crying to her mama and told her that her sister called her an idiot. When quizzed by her mother as to where she heard that word, she told her that she heard papaw say it.
Huh?
Ugh . . . I am the idiot. “Little pictures have big eyes” is an apt description of little impressionable kids; they are always watching, and we influence them more than we know. Be a good influence not only to kids but to others, especially non-believers.
An observer should be able to tell the difference from a Christian and a non-Christian and if they cannot, something is wrong with the Christian’s behavior. The Bible tells us to let our light shine brightly and we should keep on shining! We should make a concentrated effort to prevent our dark sides from blocking its illumination and use our good example and behavior to beam light out to the world.
I haven’t heard from Brett in quite some time, but I know if he is still alive, he is trying his utmost to be a tremendous witness for Christ and he and his wife exemplify in my mind how Christians should act. (They unashamedly stand up and tell people that they belong to Christ and give Him all the glory for their accomplishments.) They accept the good with the bad and know beyond a shadow of a doubt there is a good purpose for everything that occurs, even events like Brett’s battle with cancer. Selah . . .
Matt. 5:16
Let your light so shine before
men that they may see your good
works and glorify your Father in heaven.