Not from Fox Sports, but here is some info. Baseball's Seedless Spring Players' Spittin' Image May Be Undermined by Sunflower Shortage By Don Oldenburg Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page C01 First the players' strike of '94. Now the steroids scandal. What's the next high hard one reality's going to hurl at baseball? How about "The Great Sunflower Seed Shortage of 2005"? Baseball players consume sunflower seeds faster than Humvees gulp gas. And around the national pastime, from Little League to the bigs, munching salty roasted seeds and spitting shells has caught up with peanuts, popcorn and Cracker Jack. (And, once, chewing tobacco.) But here's the bad news for baseball: "Supplies are going to be very short," says John Sandbakken, director of international marketing at the National Sunflower Association in Bismarck, N.D. "The warehouses will be cleaned out and whatever is marketed will be all sold. . . . Potentially, [stores] could run out." The Agriculture Department's ballpark figure is that this season's harvest is down 29 percent. Crop production of the pinstriped "confectionary" seeds grown for human consumption hasn't looked this bleak in more than a decade. "They said they didn't know if they would be getting buckets in," says Danny Mills, a pitcher at McLean High School. When he and some teammates recently went searching for 60-pack team-size tubs of sunflower seeds to kick off their season, they got shut out. "There weren't any," says Mills, "only the small packages." Experts say strike one against this season's crop was the cold, rain and snow last spring in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota -- the key sunflower-growing states -- depriving growers of a home-field advantage. Strike two was a nasty white mold that fouled 40 percent of plants. And soybeans selling for higher prices persuaded too many farmers to plant them instead -- strike three! Yer outta sunflower seeds! "We're looking for blue skies," says Ronni Heyman, spokeswoman for David Sunflower Seeds, the nation's largest sunflower seed marketer, whose slogan is "Eat. Spit. Be Happy." Maybe it's just great expectorations, but she says there will be an abundance of seeds no later than October -- in time for the World Series. Meanwhile, David, which supplies Major League Baseball with freebie seeds, is cutting back on its usual varieties to avoid running out. "Our intent is to keep our customers in stock on the core David items -- the best-selling sizes and flavors, like the 'Original,' the 'Bar-B-Q' and the 'Ranch' flavor seeds," Heyman says. David's new travel cup, designed to serve as a spittoon for shells, is still in the lineup, she adds. "The tag line on that is 'spit responsibly.' " How sunflower seeds teamed up with baseball isn't clear. Frederick C. Klein says sunflower seeds are a country thing and baseball is a country game. "There have been seed chewers all the way back," says Klein, a former sports columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of "For the Love of Baseball: An A-to-Z Primer for Baseball Fans of All Ages." His 1997 book "Sunflower Seeds and Seoul Food" is a collection of his baseball columns. Klein dates the recent seed surge to 12 years ago, when Major League Baseball banned chewing tobacco from the minor leagues and discouraged its use in the majors. Chaw had been around baseball since the handlebar mustache days. "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 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." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51785-2005Apr13.html
Yeah, I knew about the shortage, but a fellow poster/good friend was the one asking the questions to Lidge, Berkman and Ausmus about it. Apparently, it's pretty funny.
