Yoenis Cespedes and his chain-smoking habit are still waiting to sign with a team - The Washington Post
The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Yoenis Cespedes and his chain-smoking habit are still waiting to sign with a team

By
Yoenis Cespedes had a smoking-hot second half of the 2015 season. (Matt Slocum/AP)

As winter clamps down on the East Coast, these words might warm you up a bit: spring training is just a month away. Even so, there are a number of high-profile players still in free agency, waiting to agree to terms with the right club.

One of those players is Yoenis Cespedes, last seen struggling in the playoffs for the Mets, but before that, leading the team to the postseason with his red-hot bat. In fact, despite not joining the club until August, having arrived in a trade from the Tigers, some argued that Cespedes should have won the National League MVP award, such was his effect on New York’s fortunes.

Baltimore restaurant offers Yoenis Cespedes lifetime supply of crabs

But if Cespedes spent August and September absolutely smoking NL pitching, he also apparently spent that time simply smoking. As in, puffing cigarettes every chance he got.

A recent report by John Harper of the New York Daily News, one that was cited Tuesday by Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, contained this tidbit:

“Not that Cespedes is a bad guy, according to sources, so much as someone ‘who marches to his own drumbeat’ and apparently irritated the Mets at times by not taking batting practice, not hustling during games at times and constantly smoking cigarettes between innings.”

Now that is old-school! We know that chewing tobacco is still a thing in MLB, but even that is rapidly declining. Who smokes cigarettes anymore, let alone at an apparently voracious pace?

It’s one thing for a player to smoke a victory cigar, especially an actual Cuban such as Cespedes, but downing butts on a per-inning basis seems noteworthy, and something that teams might be considering, while the 30-year-old slugger waits for a sufficiently lucrative long-term contract offer. Cespedes’ smoking habit, which was already known by some but came as a recent revelation to many, certainly caught the attention of the Internet.

Eventually, some team will pay Cespedes, and quite a bit of money at that. Presumably, that team will be telling itself, “Hey, it didn’t hurt Joe DiMaggio, right?”