Whether it’s administering a hotfoot (Instructions: Stick a book of matches to someone’s shoe with gum, then light the whole book.) or throwing a pie at a reporter, someone’s got to be responsible for making the game of baseball a little lighter.

In fact, I personally don’t think that there’s enough trickery these days. We need more blow up dolls in the clubhouse (Nick Swisher did that with the White Sox), and more firecrackers lit underneath players’ feet. Enough with the lame dancing Mr. Papelbon.

Here are my picks for some of your better pitcher pranksters throughout the MLB

“Everyday” Eddie Guardado

Guardado is notorious for putting whoopee cushions on chairs and pelting the blackboard with spitballs. But amongst his best work is the Itching powder story from his days on the Twins:

Cristian Guzman could not stop itching. This went on for four days, until he found himself on the shoulder of a Minnesota freeway, outside of his car, scratching at his underwear like a man with the worst case of chicken pox in human history. The next day Guzman queried clubhouse attendants about the shampoo and soap they used in the team shower.

His Minnesota Twins teammates had heard enough. They started laughing, cackling, crying, falling on the ground. And right then, Guzman knew.

Eddie Guardado had struck again.
Jason Schmidt

Word is Schmidt was a total terror in San Francisco. However, Schmidt is one of the more creative guys. He doesn’t just light up matches or throw pies. He gets into his players. Here’s one:

The latest thing was that he had a remote control fart machine and he put it in Brad Penny’s locker while he was doing an interview in San Francisco. Penny wasn’t exactly thrilled with this.

Roger McDowell

There are too many to name here but amongst the many pranks McDowell pulled, here’s some of his best work:

Constructing shaving-cream pies and blowing bubble-gum bubbles for the tops of baseball caps. Setting off firecrackers in the bat racks to “wake up the bats.” Administering a hotfoot or two. Wearing a tool belt in the dugout. Starring in a classic Seinfeld episode as the “second spitter.”

Moe Drabowsky

Unfortunately Drabowsky passed away but more than anything else, he was known for being one of the most zany players in the majors. He loved to make prank calls from bullpen phones and once gave commissioner Bowie Kuhn a hotfoot (see beginning of article for definition)

Slipping sneezing powder into the air conditioning system of the opponent’s locker room was a pet trick. So was putting goldfish in the other team’s water cooler

Oh, and the snakes: Because of Drabowsky, they’d show up in shaving kits, lockers and many other places. During a reunion dinner in Baltimore, in fact, one of them slithered out of Brooks Robinson’s bread basket and frightened him.

Brett Myers

While Myers may have more of a reputation for beating his wife than anything else, he still pulled one of, if not the greatest pranks in the history of Major League Baseball:

From Yahoo Sports:

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick was shocked to learn that he’d been traded to the Yomiuri Giants in Japan for a player named “Kobayashi Iwamura.”

“I don’t know what to think right now,” he told reporters outside his locker shortly after getting the news from assistant general manager Ruben Amaro Jr.

Had he truly been thinking, he would have realized that such deals are prohibited. And with a little digging he could have found out that there is no Kobayashi Iwamura playing in Japan.

The “trade” was, in fact, a prank. The ruse was orchestrated by pitcher Brett Myers and was elaborate enough to include Amaro, manager Charlie Manuel, Kendrick’s agent, the media and others.

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