This Father's Day tell Little League to Knock Tobacco Out of the Park!

From Brian Hutchinson, Grassroots Director, Tobacco Free Kids:

I am writing to ask for your help in recruiting the nation’s leading youth baseball organization, Little League, to join our Knock Tobacco Out of the Park campaign.

While we have been successful at recruiting allies who support a tobacco ban in professional baseball, including ESPN commentator Bobby Valentine and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, we have been unable to get a response from the leading youth baseball organization in America.

Send your regional Little League representative a quick message asking them to publicly support the effort to prohibit tobacco use in professional baseball!

Little League has taken important steps to reduce tobacco use, including prohibition on tobacco use within their league and an education program aimed at youth on smokeless tobacco use. We applaud them for these important steps. But, in professional baseball, an image truly is worth a thousand words. When kids see their role models use tobacco, many of them want to use it too. The only way to tackle this problem is to remove the image.

Ask Little League to protect the health of current and future generations of Little Leaguers by publicly supporting the campaign to Knock Tobacco Out of the Park. It’s quick and easy to do... simply click here to send a message to your Little League regional representative.
The long legacy of tobacco use in baseball must come to an end. I hope you will join me as we stand up for kids this Father’s Day!

P.S. Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Major League Baseball Players Association (players’ union) are negotiating a five-season contract that will take effect in 2012. Both have indicated that the only way to prohibit tobacco use during games is through this collective bargaining agreement, so the time to act is now!