Baseball Hall of Shame™

by Bruce Nash

  With the camera rolling, Kendrick sat dumbfounded as Manuel and Amaro went over his travel itinerary with him, telling him he had to catch a 7:00 a.m. flight the next morning for Japan. They even produced documents for him to sign before sending him out into the clubhouse to pack. After the stunned hurler left the manager’s office, he bumped into Myers. When Kendrick said he had been traded to Japan, Myers kept a straight face while offering him best wishes.

  Rather than fess up that it was all a hoax, Myers and the others kept stringing Kendrick along for much of the day. The film crew followed him as teammates came up to say goodbye and good luck. Later that afternoon, Amaro had reporters gather around him and Kendrick, who still looked totally shell-shocked. Then Amaro informed the press that Kendrick had been officially traded to the Yomiuri Giants in exchange for Kobayashi Iwamura. Kendrick didn’t know there was no such player. The made-up name was a combination of competitive eating champ Kobayashi and Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Akinori Iwamura.

  When a reporter asked Kendrick for a reaction, the pitcher stared blankly into the camera for several seconds before uttering, “I don’t know. Uh, do they have good food in Japan?”

  Seconds later, Myers walked over to Kendrick and said, “Do you know what I say? You just got punked!” And with that pronouncement, all the players in the clubhouse broke up laughing.

  Kendrick just shook his head and smiled. He was so relieved that he wasn’t on his way to the land of sushi that he didn’t get mad at Myers. “I’m so happy to be staying in Philadelphia,” he told reporters. When asked how he would get even with Myers, Kendrick replied, “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to top that.”

  JACKIE PRICE

  Coach · Cleveland, AL · March 26, 1947

  If a movie were made about the most memorable prank pulled by Jackie Price, it would probably be called Snakes on a Train.

  Price was 33 years old when he broke into the Majors with the Cleveland Indians toward the end of the 1946 season. He played in seven games and collected three hits. But team owner Bill Veeck liked him because of his ability to entertain the fans.

  Price had honed his special routines and tricks by performing for fans before games in the Pacific Coast League, where he played for several years. In his most famous feat, Price would hang upside down strapped by his ankles to a specially constructed 10-foot-high bar and take batting practice. Batting upside down either left-handed or right-handed, Price could hit fastballs and curveballs. (In fact, he seemed to hit better upside down during BP than he did standing upright in real games.) He could also catch and throw while standing on his head.

  He did some amazing feats while upright too. With two balls in one hand, he would throw a fastball to one catcher and a curveball to another catcher all in the same motion. He would shoot a baseball out of a pneumatic tube like a mortar round high in the air, hop into a Jeep to chase after it, and then reach out and catch the ball backhanded. In another feat, he would throw three baseballs with one hand in one motion to three different players stationed around the infield.

  Despite his amazing abilities with a baseball, Price just wasn’t good enough to make it as a Major Leaguer and was released after his cup of coffee in the bigs. However, Veeck recognized that Price could still be an entertaining pregame draw for fans, so the owner signed him as a coach. Player-manager Lou Boudreau was none too pleased by the move; he thought that Price, who loved to pull jokes and goof around, would be a distraction to the players.

  And, besides, not everyone on the team liked the 20 snakes that Price brought with him on road games. The snakes were not only his pets, but also his props. Part of his routine involved hitting and catching with the serpents draped all over him.

  On March 26, 1947, the team was on a train in California heading for a spring training game. With a pair of 5-foot-long boa constrictors around his waist, Price sat in the dining car talking to newly acquired second baseman Joe Gordon, a guy who shared Price’s sense of humor. Gordon thought it would be hilarious if Price released the snakes in the dining car. So, goaded on by Gordon, Price did just that.

  Price’s upside-down worldNational Baseball Hall of Fame Library

  Also in the car at the time was a group of women bowlers on their way back from a tournament. When they saw the snakes, the women began screaming and leaping onto tables and fleeing from the dining car. The chaos and commotion forced the conductor to stop the train.

  It didn’t take him long to figure out who was responsible. Grabbing Price with both hands, the conductor demanded to know his name.

  Price answered, “Lou Boudreau, and would you kindly remove your hands from me.”

  At the next station, two policemen came aboard and marched over to Boudreau, who was playing cards with some of the players in another car. The cops threatened to throw him off the train and have him arrested.

  “For what?” asked Boudreau, who was totally confounded by the unfolding scene.

  “Letting snakes loose in the dining car,” a policeman said.

  As soon as Boudreau heard the word “snakes,” he knew who the prankster was. After convincing the police he was not the culprit, an irate Boudreau decided to save the cops the trouble of kicking Price and his reptiles off the train. Boudreau did it for them. Then, in a wire to Veeck, Boudreau announced he had sent Price and his snakes home for good. It was the last time Price appeared with the Cleveland Indians.

  GEORGE MULLIN

  Pitcher · Detroit, AL · 1907

  Detroit Tigers second baseman Germany Schaefer was arrested and locked up in jail for doing nothing more than executing to perfection the hidden-ball trick.

  He had teammate George Mullin to blame for the unexpected incarceration.

  Schaefer was obsessed with pulling the trick on unwary runners at second base, and he became very adept at it. He couldn’t wait to try it during the 1907 offseason when the Tigers went to Cuba on a barnstorming trip to play Havana’s best teams.

  In one of the games, the score was tied in the bottom of the ninth with the winning run on second for the Cuban team. Mullin, the Detroit pitcher, called time and summoned Schaefer to the mound. “See if you can get that guy on second,” Mullin whispered as he secretly slipped the ball to Schaefer. The second sacker slyly hid the ball in his glove and trotted back to his position.

  As Mullin stepped back on the mound, time was called back in, and the runner edged off second base. Then, Schaefer slapped on the tag.

  “You’re out!” yelled the American umpire. The Cuban fans were outraged and stormed onto the field, wanting to tear the flesh off Schaefer and the arbiter. Police rushed in and managed to protect the player and ump from the wild crowd.

  After a few tense minutes, the cops restored order. But then they grabbed Schaefer, announced he was under arrest, and hauled him off to jail. Despite his pleas of innocence, the shocked player spent the night in a dirty cell.

  The next morning, he was brought in front of a judge who snorted that the player’s hidden-ball play was a “shabby trick.” Schaefer began to quake, wondering if he would be tried and convicted on the spot. The judge then leaned over the bench and growled, “I ought to keep you in jail for a week.” Schaefer gulped. But after a stern lecture about fair play, the judge told the shaken Schaefer he was free to go.

  Not until Schaefer returned home after the barnstorming trip did he learn that he had been set up by none other than George Mullin, a notorious practical joker. Shortly after the team had arrived in Cuba, the hurler had bribed the police to “arrest” Schaefer the first time he pulled the hidden-ball trick.

  Everything went according to plan—except Mullin hadn’t counted on the fans rioting. As for Schaefer, the old hidden-ball trick no longer seemed as much fun anymore.

  RABBIT MARANVILLE

  Shortstop · Boston, NL · 1920
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br />   Rabbit Maranville was a 5-foot, 5-inch Hall of Fame shortstop who had a huge appetite for the ludicrous. He acted on every zany impulse, from diving fully clothed into a hotel goldfish pond to filling up a hotel closet with pigeons.

  As a master prankster, he had teammates entertained . . . and often enraged, which is what happened when he played one of his signature practical jokes in 1920.

  In a hotel room filled with fellow players, he started a playful wrestling match with big and brawny Boston Braves teammate Jack Scott. “Stay away from me, Rabbit,” warned the 6-foot, 3-inch, 200-pound pitcher. “I don’t want to wrestle you because I might hurt you.”

  Maranville responded by charging Scott, who reluctantly applied a headlock that sent the fun-loving imp slumping to the floor in a dead faint. Scott, a religious man, was upset and said, “Lord, forgive me. I sure didn’t want to hurt that boy.” Then he left the room.

  When Maranville recovered, he conjured up a cruel trick. He smeared talcum powder on his face and arms and stretched out in bed like a corpse. Then he sent an accomplice to tell Scott, “You killed Rabbit. He’s dead!” Aghast, Scott raced into the room, fell to his knees in front of Maranville’s “lifeless” body, and prayed fervently for a miracle to restore the little shortstop to life. “Lord, you know I didn’t mean that boy any harm,” he wailed. “Please put the breath of life back into the Rabbit. Please, Lord, have mercy on me—and him—and let the little Rabbit live!”

  The distraught Scott went down to the lobby, sat in a chair and waited for what he was sure would be the police coming to arrest him on a murder rap. He was still there early the next morning when Maranville, the picture of health, strolled blithely by and chirped, “Hello, Jack. My, you’re up early.”

  When Scott recovered from the shock and realized he had been duped, he charged after Maranville. This time, Scott really did want to kill him.

  Maranville, that Rascally RabbitNational Baseball Hall of Fame Library

  BILL CASTRO

  JERRY AUGUSTINE

  REGGIE CLEBELAND

  BOB GALASSO

  Pitchers · Milwaukee, AL · 1979

  During an afternoon game on a hot summer day, Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher Bob McClure had to relieve himself, so he went into the bullpen bathroom at County Stadium.

  He entered the bathroom unaware that he was about to become the victim of a prank. The flagpole at the ballpark was directly above the bathroom, and the pole’s cord hung just above the door. With McClure inside, relievers Bill Castro, Jerry Augustine, Reggie Cleveland, and Bob Galasso pulled the cord down and wrapped it around the doorknob.

  When McClure tried to leave, the door wouldn’t budge. He pushed and pushed, but he still couldn’t get it open.

  Sweating and screaming, kicking and cursing, McClure demanded to be set free. But his fellow hurlers didn’t take him out of the outhouse oven until he was well done.

  “I swear it was 115 degrees inside, like a hot box,” McClure recalled. “I was in there for fifteen minutes, yanking so hard on the door the flagpole almost bent in half. It looked like I had a big old bass on the end of that pole.”

  MOE DRABOWSKY

  Pitcher · Kansas City, AL · October 6, 1969

  Moe Drabowsky never set the world on fire as a pitcher, but he did give the gutsiest hotfoot ever.

  He came chillingly close to sending baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn’s shoes up in flames.

  The fun-loving relief pitcher was in the stands at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium to watch his former team, the Baltimore Orioles, complete a three-game sweep of the Twins in the American League Championship Series. Drabowsky, who had been traded to the Kansas City Royals at the end of the 1968 season, walked into the winners’ clubhouse to extend congratulations to his old buddies.

  That’s when he spotted Commissioner Kuhn—the perfect target for a prank, at least in Drabowsky’s warped mind. While Kuhn was happily occupied with the trophy presentation, mischievous Moe crawled up behind him and sprayed lighter fluid on the floor around the commissioner’s shiny patent leather shoes. Then Drabowsky set it on fire.

  Players snickered but Kuhn was unaware at first that he had been hot-footed. He finally paid attention when the blaze spread to his new shoes. The commissioner leaped like a pivot man on a double play and quickly stomped out the flames before any damage was done.

  Marveled Drabowsky, “He must have jumped 4 or 6 feet. Yow! What a scream he gave out. The best part was he never figured out who did it.”

  DAVID ORTIZ

  Designated Hitter · Minnesota, Boston, AL · 1997–present

  TORII HUNTER

  Outfielder · Minnesota, Anaheim, AL · 1997-present

  COREY KOSKIE

  Infielder-Outfielder · Minnesota, Toronto, AL;

  Milwaukee, NL · 1998–2006

  David Ortiz found himself in a rather sticky situation as a payback for his pranks.

  When Big Papi was the designated hitter for the Minnesota Twins, he liked to play practical jokes on his teammates, especially center fielder Torii Hunter and third baseman Corey Koskie.

  As the DH, Papi had time to kill while Hunter and Koskie were out in the field, so he would sneak off into the clubhouse and ravage their clothes. One of his favorite practical jokes was to go into their lockers and cut the toes off their socks so when they put them on after the game, their feet would go right through the mutilated socks. Another time, he put Koskie’s street clothes in the freezer. After the game, Koskie found his duds frozen stiff.

  But then it was payback time. Koskie smeared peanut butter in Ortiz’s underwear while Big Papi was taking a shower. “So David got out of the shower and he’s talking and laughing,” Hunter told ESPN.com. “Everybody’s talking to him but we knew that peanut butter was in his underwear. Then he put his pants on, put his shirt on, put his shoes on, walked out about 10 yards and then felt something funny and started getting upset and screaming at everybody, ‘Who put peanut butter in my underwear?’” Ortiz confirmed the story on HBO’s Costas Now. He told Bob Costas, “I was feeling funny. I walked back in, and it was either people on the ground laughing or people running. But I was going to kill somebody.”

  Rather than commit murder, Ortiz got even. He lubricated Koskie’s underwear with Icy Hot just before a road trip.

  When Ortiz was traded to the Boston Red Sox in 2003, he kept up his joking ways, often slamming a shaving cream pie in the face of a teammate. In 2006, he poured a pitcher of milk over teammate Coco Crisp during a photo shoot.

  Even though Ortiz was with Boston, he and his former Twins comrades continued to prank each other. After a spring training game between the Twins and Red Sox in 2003, Ortiz went into the clubhouse to change into his street clothes. When he arrived in front of his locker, he discovered his clothes had been stolen. In their place was an orange jumpsuit, the kind worn by work-release prisoners at the local county jail.

  Big Papi put it on and walked out of the ballpark to meet with fans. “It was hilarious,” recalled Hunter, who took full responsibility for the swapped attire. “He was signing autographs and he was cracking up. He was good with it. He had fun with it.”

  The first time that he returned to Minnesota as a Boston Red Sox player, Ortiz decided to leave a calling card for Koskie. During the game, Ortiz sneaked out of the visitor’s clubhouse in the Metrodome and walked down a hallway to the Twins locker room. There, he stuffed Koskie’s street shoes full of juice and peanut butter. They were the only shoes that Koskie had brought to the ballpark.

  Big Papi: A little milk with your Coco Crisp?Gary Bogdon/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

  WILL MCENANEY

  Pitcher

  MIKE MCENANEY

  Will’s Brother

  Pittsburgh, NL · September 17, 1978

 
Will McEnaney double-crossed his manager.

  Throughout a game against the visiting Montreal Expos, Pittsburgh Pirates skipper Chuck Tanner thought he could see his left-handed reliever sitting in the bullpen. Actually, Will was relaxing in the clubhouse watching a football game the entire time. Then who was that in his uniform? Will’s twin, Mike.

  “We planned it all out,” the prankish Will recalled. “We’re identical twins, and we used to do things like this all the time when we were growing up. We switched classes, girlfriends, and Little League uniforms, but never got caught.”

  Will concocted the scheme because he wanted to watch the football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals on TV. But the gridiron battle was slated to start at the same time as the baseball game.

  In a stroke of luck, Mike paid Will a visit to the Three Rivers Stadium clubhouse before the game and mentioned that he’d never been in the dugout or bullpen during an actual Major League contest.

  “You will today,” said Will, handing his uniform to his twin. “This is the perfect opportunity. Now I can watch the football game.”

  Mike was leery and said, “I don’t think we can get away with this.”

  “Sure we can,” declared Will. “No one is going to find out. Go out to the bullpen for about five or six innings and then come back and I’ll take your place.”

  “What if Tanner calls on me—I mean you—to pitch?”

  “If they ask you to warm up, just tell them you have to go to the bathroom first. Then hustle back here to the clubhouse and we’ll change. But don’t worry. Tanner and I aren’t getting along at all, so I really don’t expect to be called.”