John Gibbons blew me off twice in the past year; he said he wanted to be sure he actually had it kicked before going public.

“What if you write the story and then I fall off the wagon again?” he said back in spring training.

But Gibbons is confident now that he’s out of the woods. On Monday, the Blue Jays manager will turn 53 and later in June will mark another milestone: one year clean of chewing tobacco.

“Now I just have to get off of this stuff,” he said, pointing to the wad of Nicorette gum in his mouth. “This stuff is more expensive.”

Speaking to the Star inside the visiting manager’s office in Washington earlier this week, Gibbons said he had tried to quit his “nasty, brutal habit” for five or six years. He hardly chewed in the off-season, would stay off it for a month or two at a time and stopped buying it for himself. But before this year it was common to find him poking around one of his player’s lockers in search of a fix.

“That was kind of for my conscience,” he said, laughing. “Like, ‘I’m not out there buying it.’ But guys used to hit me up pretty good when I had it, so it was payback.”

The turning point for Gibbons came last June when Tony Gwynn died of salivary gland cancer. The Hall of Famer was just 54 and had chewed tobacco throughout his 20-year career. Gibbons didn’t know Gwynn personally, but his death hit home. It was the last push he needed to “wise up” and get over the hump.

“It was something I needed to do,” Gibbons said. “It wasn’t something I was proud of, but you get addicted to it, you know? Like all addictions you wish you could stop, but it’s not that easy.”

Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, Gibbons first tried chewing tobacco when he was in high school. He had to hide it from his parents — his mother is a dental hygienist, after all — and couldn’t do it on the baseball field. But if he was “runnin’ around” with friends he might have a chew.

“I didn’t do it much, maybe if we were doing a little dove huntin’ or fishin.’ ”

It didn’t become a habit, he said, until he started playing professionally in the New York Mets’ minor-league system. “A lot of guys would do it. Then I was hooked.”

His brand was loose leaf Red Man tobacco, which he would roll up and stuff in his cheek. (Snuff, the finely ground dipping tobacco favoured by most ball players, always made him sick. “I can’t even stand the smell of it.”)

Soon it became as routine as batting practice.

“It was almost like without it you felt naked on the field,” he said.

Gibbons’ wife and three children — aged 22, 20 and 15 — have been on him for years to quit, and his mother would regularly scold him.

“She said, ‘You’re stupid. You get a little enjoyment out of this, but it’ll cost you.’ Because she cleaned people’s teeth and she could see the pre-cancerous lesions and the receding gum lines and the stained teeth.”

But there was always something about stepping onto the fresh grass in spring training every year, Gibbons said. That’s when the temptation was greatest and his willpower faltered. “It’s sad to say, but for a long time in this game it went hand-in-hand with everything else.”

While not as prevalent as it once was, tobacco is still common in baseball. Recent surveys have found about one-third of major-league players use some form of smokeless tobacco, down from 50 per cent 20 years ago. Tobacco companies used to stock major-league clubhouses, providing their products free of charge to players, but that practice has been long banned. Tobacco use has also been prohibited in baseball’s minor leagues since 1993, but it’s allowed in the majors as long as it’s kept discreet. Cans and tins must not be visible on the field or in the dugout and players cannot do television interviews while chewing or dipping. A major-league tobacco ban has been discussed during collective bargaining negotiations, but the players have rejected it.

Even when he knew it was a nasty habit, Gibbons admitted he enjoyed tobacco. He says it would at once “rev” him up and also level his anxiety.

“Baseball’s like this,” he said, making an up-and-down, roller-coaster motion with his hand. “You live and die by the scoreboard. But the lows of a loss outweigh the highs of a win. It’s just the way the sport is. So everybody’s looking for that feel-good thing, you know? And that kind of thing makes you feel good when things are going bad.

“Plus, I eat,” he said. “I swallow my frustration.”

But he says the cravings are gone now, at least for tobacco. Nicorette has been the key for him — “Do you think they’ll send me any free boxes?” — but given how many times he tried and failed before his latest successful attempt he’s reluctant to offer any tips to others who want to quit.

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“Don’t start,” he said. “Then you won’t have to worry about it.”

Gibbons says he doesn’t miss it and he hopes tobacco use continues to decline in baseball.

“You hope for this generation that’s out there now that they’re smarter than we were.”