Big League Chew, the iconic shredded bubble gum and preferred choice of youth baseball players across the country, will have a new look this summer. The brand recently announced that it has partnered with PLB Sports to feature the images of Major League Baseball stars Matt Kemp and Cole Hamels on its familiar poaches of gum, replacing cartoon characters.
The idea for Big League Chew was conjured up by Rob Nelson '71, a former Cornell pitcher under Hall of Fame head coach Ted Thoren. Nelson teamed up with former minor-league teammate Jim Bouton, of writing fame from the book "Ball Four", to launch the product 33 years ago.
"This was uncharted territory for us," Nelson told ESPN's Darren Rovell. "But these guys epitomize what is good about the game of baseball and the time is right."
For more on the history of Big League Chew, here is a story written in 2010 by
Julie Greco of Cornell Athletic Communications ...
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Author Jonathan Swift stated: "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought."
For former Cornell baseball player Rob Nelson '71, his discovery took two things routinely seen at ballparks, chewing gum and chewing tobacco, and thinking up a product that has stood the test of time for 30 years – Big League Chew.
Nelson came to Cornell after graduating from Nassau Community College and had his best season with the Big Red as a senior, going 6-2, with his losses coming to Big 10 champion Michigan State and EIBL champion Harvard. After graduating with a degree in philosophy, he obtained a master's degree in education from SUNY Cortland, but still had the urge to play baseball, so he made his way to South Africa where he pitched for the Varsity Old Boys Baseball Club and for the Western Province all-star squad.
After several years, he made his way back to the United States and in 1977, he found himself with the Portland Mavericks, an independent Class A minor league baseball team that was made up primarily of has-beens and never-weres. One of his teammates at the time was 38-year-old Jim Bouton, a former New York Yankees and author of the wildly popular book Ball Four.
One evening, while sitting in the rightfield bullpen, the two pitchers watched in disgust as some of their younger teammates tried to spit tobacco juice on each others' white cleats.
Seeing Bouton's reaction, Nelson shared an idea that had stemmed from his younger days growing up on Long Island. Nelson's nickname was Nellie, so he was a fan of Hall of Famer Nellie Fox, one of many ballplayers that kept a large wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth while he played. Nelson often emulated his hero with a log of Bazooka bubble gum.
“I told him, 'I always thought it would be cool to have shredded gum so we could look as good as these guys, but not get ill,' explains Nelson. “And I remember Bouton's eyes got really big and he said 'Jeez, I really like that idea.' I like to say that I had the inspiration, but truth is, Jim was the perspiration because he was really the guy that did the bulk of the work. He said, 'I can sell that idea. I can go to a company and I can find somebody that would manufacture this gum.' And on a handshake, we became partners.”
Bouton's enthusiasm was one thing, but it took the work of another Cornell graduate, Dan Chernoff B.E.E. 1956, LL.B. 1959, to make sure that Big League Chew had a future.
Nelson met Chernoff that same summer at a Cornell Club of Portland cocktail hour. As the two talked, Nelson discovered that Chernoff was a patent and trademark lawyer.
“I had already approached a lawyer and he told me that I couldn't protect the idea,” says Nelson. “And Dan said that we couldn't patent it, but we could certainly protect it with trademarks and copyrights and so forth. And Dan was absolutely right.”
After that, just one obstacle remained, in that neither Rob nor Jim knew how to make gum. While Nelson thought they could just explain their product to any potential buyers, Bouton felt strongly that they needed an actual prototype to show.
As fate would have it, in January 1979 Nelson read an article in People Magazine about a small company in Arlington, Texas that had a do-it-yourself bubble gum kit. He purchased a case and set about making several batches of gum in the kitchen of one of the Mavericks' batboys.
“[We] cut it with scissors, bought chewing tobacco pouches, put the gum inside, put my picture on the pouch and called it Big League Chew," Bouton told Dan Simmons in a recent Chicago Tribune article.
With the product in hand, the pair went to all the major gum companies, using Bouton's clout to get in the door, but most were reluctant to try a product so unique. Finally, Amurol Products, a subsidiary of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, introduced Big League Chew in 1980.
In the first year, Amurol sold $18 million of Big League Chew at wholesale, a number that well exceeded Nelson's wildest dreams.
“I was over the moon and stunned by it,” he explains. “When we signed that first deal, I remember saying to my brother Ed, 'At least now I won't have to paint houses in the summer.' I thought I was going to have a teaching job and coach baseball somewhere. So then to think that I wouldn't have to work in the summer because I might make 25 or 30 thousand dollars extra with the little bubble gum idea was a dream. Then it turned out to be 10 times that!”
As Big League Chew continued to make its way into Little League dugouts across America, Nelson continued to pitch all over the world. With Big League Chew paying his bills, Nelson was able to continue playing into his early 50s in places such as South Africa, Australia and England.
Eventually, Wrigley absorbed Amurol and Nelson bought out Bouton, but neither of those changes was nearly as important as when Mars purchased Wrigley in 2008.
“I could see the writing on the wall that a small brand like mine wasn't going to be a priority,” explains Nelson. “So I asked the people at Wrigley if I could get out of my contract a year early and they agreed.”
At that point, Nelson's priority was to move the production back to the United States, so he purchased the gum shredding and packaging machines from Wrigley and found Ford Gum and Machine, a company based in Akron, N.Y.
The addition of Big League Chew has brought roughly 20 new jobs to the Western New York plant and will increase Ford's production by about 40 percent.
"This is a great American story about two great American companies," said Ford Gum Company President George Stege. "What's more American than baseball? It's bringing baseball, gum to America. Giving jobs to Americans ... This iconic product will be our biggest brand in terms of both production and sales.”
For Nelson, the return of Big League Chew to New York, the state in which he was raised and went to college, and partnering with a small company like Ford Gum, is the ideal situation.
“The Ford Gum Company is basically the Amurol of the new millennium,” says Nelson. “I'm going to a company where, figuratively speaking, I'm going to be pitching and batting fourth. Plus, it feels like this has come full circle, returning to the state of New York where all my high-jinks began.”
Other than the new venture with Ford Gum, Nelson spends his days busying himself with small projects and inventions, as well as devoting his time to his wife Sarah and children, 11-year-old Paige and 7-year-old twins Charlie and Jane.
Nelson also has plans to take a special trip this spring with several friends to Princeton, N.J., to celebrate the 40th anniversary of one of his greatest collegiate triumphs, as he led Cornell to a 2-0 victory with a two-hitter against the Tigers.
He also wants to do something for Cornell and the baseball program that was so instrumental in getting him where he is today.
“Right now, I'm the unofficial gum of Cornell baseball,” says Nelson. “But I would love to really help the program and pay tribute to [former] Coach Ted Thoren. I would love for the bullpen to be the Big League Chew bullpen and have a plaque out there that says 'Rob Nelson threw here once; briefly and ineffectively.' Something that would be playful but show my gratitude to the University.”
