Baseball players are notorious for playing practical jokes on one another. Several undoubtedly have involved snakes of the rubber, plastic or even robotic variety.
But a snake slithering across the top step of the dugout when your team is trailing by six runs in the fifth inning of a National League Championship Series game? Wrong place, wrong time.
So it dawned on Dodgers pitcher Brent Honeywell Jr., catcher Will Smith and bench coach Danny Lehmann that the serpent in the Dodgers’ dugout on Monday was real and would be best avoided.