On at least one occasion, I led an officewide discussion of the most non-descript team in the major professional sports.

By non-descript, I meant not particularly local, not particularly good and even not particularly bad. The one team about which you or your friends think about the least. The San Diego Padres, who have won one World Series game in two trips in a span of 45 seasons, are probably at the top of most lists.

And yet, when I received word of the death of Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn on Monday, I gasped audibly.

I guess 3,000 hits gives you that kind of name recognition, even if a few of us in the U.P. occasionally spell it ‘Gwinn’ on accident.

This is not a tribute column, mostly because there are writers out there much more qualified than I am to do so and they have been doing so, nearly unanimously.

This is a warning column.

Tony Gwynn died at age 54 after his second bout with an eminently preventable disease: oral cancer. Gwynn believed a decades-long chewing tobacco habit brought the cancer about.

I’ve seen the stuff on and around the playing fields and rinks of this area more times than I care to admit and nothing more reliably turns my stomach than seeing someone’s ‘spitter’ on the boards while I’m covering a game.

That said, it’s none of my business. It is, however, your health and while I’ve got your attention, I’m going to make it your business.

According to the regional health assessment conducted by the Western U.P. Health Department, 5.2 percent of Houghton and Keweenaw county adults use smokeless tobacco products, 9.4 percent of local men. Persons aged 18-39 had a usage rate above 7 percent, nearly double that of middle-aged persons. If there was a way to control for athletes, I’d be comfortable in the assertion that the percentage would be even higher than that.

A study of Manitoba Junior Hockey League players indicated 50 percent of all players used smokeless tobacco even though the product is significantly more expensive north of the border.

According to the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, at least 28 chemicals in smokeless tobacco have been found to cause cancer, and even if it doesn’t, the nicotine that naturally occurs in all tobacco products is absorbed into the blood through facial tissues even after removing tobacco from the mouth and it stays in the blood longer for smokeless tobacco users than for smokers.

Gwynn had surgeries in 2010 and 2012 to remove a cancerous tumor in his right cheek. In the second of those, over the course of 14 hours, doctors removed his facial nerve (because the tumor and nerve were intertwined) and replaced it with one from his shoulder.

I write about this problem with the assumption that you didn’t ask to be lectured about your health or your habits. Sorry the column is low on jokes this week.

However, if I can talk a young hockey player or ballplayer out of it or even make them think twice about the habit, then this column was a better idea than even the funny ones.

I’m just angry that a Hall of Fame hitter and by all accounts a Hall of Fame person is dead in his early 50’s for reasons that are almost certainly preventable. Yeah, he played on the other side of the country, but I or my successors don’t want to have to write that kind of story about someone else up here.

There’s a reason to think about at least one San Diego Padre.

Brandon Veale can be reached at bveale@mininggazette.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/redveale