If you played T-Ball, Little League, high school or college baseball, softball or professional baseball any time in the last 36 years, you have undoubtedly heard of Big League Chew – the shredded bubble gum that (sort of) resembles chewing tobacco and even comes in a resealable chewing tobacco-type pouch – which was the very premise of the product.

I first learned of Big League Chew while playing in a slow-pitch softball league back in the early ’80s and, in fact, there might still be a pouch of it in my dusty old game bag, which I haven’t opened since.

Last Friday evening while listening to MLB Network Radio’s MLB Roundtrip, show hosts Jeff Joyce and Steve Sax were interviewing Ron Nelson. Who’s Rob Nelson you ask? Rob was a three-year minor league pitcher with the Low Single-A Portland Mavericks of the short season Northwest Independent League who befriended former MLB pitcher Jim Bouton, who himself was trying to make a comeback after a five year layoff. Bouton, as you may recall, is the author of the controversial book Ball Four.

The reason that Joyce and Sax were interviewing Nelson is because he and Bouton are the inventors of Big League Chew bubble gum, which was celebrating its 36th anniversary.

The original Big League Chew pouch – circa 1980.
(Photo credit – jasonliebigstuff)

So what’s the big deal about a bubble gum company celebrating its 36th anniversary? This goes back to the opening sentence of this article – everybody who ever played any form of baseball has either tried or at least heard of Big League Chew, and that’s a big deal in anyone’s book.

To fully appreciate the 36-year history of Big League Chew, you have to know how it all came about, which is a classic ‘Why didn’t I think of that’ story if ever there was one.

“The whole idea was to come up with a fun idea for an alternative to chewing tobacco,” Nelson told Joyce and Sax. “The story really started when Jim Bouton and I were sitting in the bullpen [during a 1977 Portland Maverick’s game] and Jim looked at me when guys were having contests for [spitting] accuracy and distance for chewing tobacco while sitting in the bullpen. Jim had asked me if I had ever chewed and I said I tried it once and it never made sense to me and I never liked it.

“It was about an inning or two later that I said ‘You know, I’ve had an idea for a long time that if we could shred bubble gum, we could look as cool as these guys but we wouldn’t get ill.'” added Nelson. “So that was the genesis of it and Jim said to me ‘I love that idea, we could sell that idea.’ And he said ‘What would you call it?’ And kind of a throwaway line was ‘I don’t know, Big League Chew?’ It was a preposterous notion to have the idea and the name within the same sixty seconds, but that’s what happened.”

Anyone who has ever seen a pouch of Big League Chew – and again, who hasn’t? – knows that half of its attraction are the cartoon-like caricatures on the pouches themselves. And how did this come about? Once again, Rob Nelson’s brilliance came into play.

“I found a local art firm here to create a pouch,” said Nelson. “The first design we had was Jim Bouton on the cover cartoony-like with a bow that had ‘Best I ever tried, Big League Chew Bubble gum’ and it went from there.”

Went from there indeed.

Nelson and Bouton shared their idea with all of the major gum companies and were met with the same reply: “That’s interesting, but we don’t make anything like that,” to which Bouton and Nelson said “Precisely.”

Finally, Amurol Products, a novelty gum company in Illinois, bought into their idea and introduced Big League Chew on February 6, 1979. In the first twelve months Amurol sold $18 million worth of Big League Chew wholesale.

Nelson eventually sold the idea to the William Wrigley Jr. Company (as in Wrigley Chewing Gum; as in Wrigley Field; as in the Chicago Cubs), who began making Big League Chew at it’s factory in Monterrey, Mexico and, according to Nelson, it continued to average $15 million in sales annually.

But somewhere along the line the novelty of Big League Chew apparently lost it’s luster to the billion dollar a year chewing gum company and Wrigley sold the rights to Big League Chew to Ford Gum & Machine Company of Akron, NY in 2010. And just as Big League Chew has put smiles on the faces of kids (of all ages) for nearly four decades, it has also put a huge smile on the face of Steve Greene, senior Vice President of sales and marketing for Ford Gum and Machine Co.

“This deal brought back the product manufacturing to the United States at the Ford Gum facility in Akron, NY and added 40 new jobs,” Greene said.

Since taking over Big League Chew, Ford Gum and Machine Co. has taken the popular bubble gum to a whole new level. In addition to adding several ‘limited edition’ pouches that include (now) former Dodger Matt Kemp and (hopefully future Dodger) Cole Hamels, Big League Chew lovers can now have their own faces on custom made pouches of Big League Chew through their My Big League Chew website. Ford also added individually wrapped Big League Gumballs and Big League Bubble Gum Lollipops to the BLC family.

Big League Chew offers personalized pouches with your favorite All-Star on the cover.
(Images courtesy of MyBigLeagueChew.com)

Needless to say, Big League Chew has come a long way since that July evening in the Portland Maverick’s bullpen in 1977. In fact, since its release on February 6, 1979, more than 500 million pouches of Big League Chew have been sold. In the words of Jim Bouton himself, Big League Chew is “…the best idea to ever come out of a bullpen.”