Is old Veterans Stadium to blame for brain tumors?

Unless you’re at least 40 years old you probably don’t remember David West, who was a very effective middle reliever on the Phillies pennant-winning team of 1993. Most of the times he pitched his batterymate was Darren “Dutch” Daulton.

West died last month at the age of 57. Daulton was

55 when he died nearly five years ago.

Both men were stricken with Gioblastoma. That’s a doctor’s fancy word for a brain tumor.

Tragically, they weren’t unique. Ken Brett, Johnny Oates, Tug McGraw and John Vukovich went before them. None lived long enough to celebrate his 60th birthday. All succumbed to Gioblastoma. All of them played for the Phillies during the era when the club played its home games in Veterans Stadium.

The cause or causes of Gioblastoma are unknown but it typically strikes three people out of every 100,000.

Clearly this is not a typical circumstance. Six people with a common environment have died from the disease in a relatively short period of time. It doesn’t seem likely that that would be merely coincidence. It seems reasonable to conclude that an unknown cancer-causing agent was present in that stadium and many — if not all — of the players were exposed to it.

After West’s death one doctor went on television and called for an “investigation.”

I would agree, but the word I would use would be “study.” An investigation normally connotes wrongdoing of some sort — that someone deliberately or carelessly left people exposed to a toxic material. I doubt that’s case. How can anyone deliberately or carelessly expose someone to a toxic item when no one knows what that item is?

A scientific examination of the situation, however, could be extremely beneficial. It might save lives. If the cause can be identified, it could be something people would know to avoid in the future.

Whatever it is, it would have to have been there constantly. Brett spent only one season (1973) with the Phillies. West did not join the team until 20 years later. The other four played there in between. If something in the stadium was causing cancer it was something that didn’t change much with time.

The doctor suggested that investigators focus on the stadium radar and the artificial surface of the ballpark. I think both are good thoughts but neither, in fact, existed — at least not in the manner that the doctor suggests.

There was no such thing as stadium radar back then. The radar that was used emanated from hand-held radar guns that were operated by scouts and club personnel. They were used in every ballpark and certainly were no different in Philadelphia.

The stadium turf consisted of a layer or rubber underneath the plastic “grass.” But there wasn’t one such surface — there were two. The original one lasted about two decades before it was ripped out and replaced. If there was a cancer-causing agent in the surface it must have been present in both of them. If so, why wasn’t it present in any other ballpark? Artificial surfaces were common in that era? Did the Phillies use something in theirs that the other teams didn’t?

The Phillies shared the stadium with the Eagles. Football players frequently have their faces pressed to the surface in ways that are rare for baseball players. Yet not one person who played for the Eagles in that era developed brain cancer. That would seem to indicate that the turf wasn’t responsible.

What else might it be? Was there something in the clubhouse? The paint on the walls? Something used in the trainers’ room or in the players’ lounge? All of that is possible but it seems unlikely that there would have been anything in any of those areas that lasted more than 20 years and was found nowhere else.

Could it have been the environment? Was there an industry or some other concern in the neighborhood polluting the local air? If that was the case there would be a higher incidence of cancer among residents of that part of Philadelphia. Employees of the team who were not players would have been impacted.

That doesn’t appear to be the case. The six known victims were all ball players.

I’m not a scientist and I’m not a detective but something tells me everybody’s barking up the wrong tree when they’re looking for something found only in Veterans Stadium. I don’t think the ballpark was responsible.

Perhaps there is some coincidence here — at least to this extent. Perhaps it’s coincidence that six players who contracted a rare disease all played for the Phillies. None of them played his entire career with the Phillies. Most of them played significant seasons elsewhere.

And they weren’t the only six.

Other prominent players who never played for the Phillies — Bobby Murcer, Gary Carter, Dick Howser and Dan Quisenberry — died from Gioblastoma. So did David Aucoin, a pitcher whose big-league career consisted of only two games but who spent 10 seasons pitching in the minors. Bobby Bonds died of lung cancer at the age of 57 but his condition was complicated by the presence of a brain tumor.

And let’s not forget umpire Harry Wendelstedt who was 73 when he died. The cause of his death was a brain tumor.

The numbers are staggering. It suggests to me that baseball has an unidentified problem — not merely the Phillies.

The TV doctor might have been confused when he suggested “stadium radar” but I suspect he actually put his finger on the culprit. Radar.

Every baseball scout carries a radar gun the way every carpenter carries a hammer. He uses it to read the velocity of pitches. Every pitching coach in the majors, the minors and on many amateur teams, designates someone with a radar gun to record the speed of every pitch that is thrown.

Many games are played with a half dozen or more radar guns in use on every single pitch. Most of the time the users are located directly behind home plate which means the impulse from every radar gun will not merely bounce off the baseball. It will likely strike the pitcher, the batter, the catcher and the home plate umpire. The pitcher, catcher and umpire are in a position to receive hundreds of these impulses every game.

There’s no direct evidence that radar impulses are harmful in any way. But I think it’s possible — even likely — that a study would find that they are.

Notice that pitchers and catchers seem to be disproportionately impacted. Brett, McGraw, West, Quisenberry and Aucoin were all pitchers. Oates, Daulton and Carter were catchers.

Auto racing and tennis are two other sports in which radar is commonly used. Race drivers are likely shielded by their cars from the impacts of a radar gun, but tennis players are not. In the past 40 years six former tennis pros from the men’s and women’s circuits have died from brain cancer.

Six!

It seems to me the circumstantial evidence is quite potent — and very, very alarming.

Baseball might be killing its own and doing it with a gun that was never intended to inflict harm on anyone. I think Major League Baseball and the Players Association ought to commence a joint study of radar and do it immediately.

After all, this might truly be a matter of life and death.