The Art of Baseball Pranking

Published on 5-Jun-2017 by Raoul Duke

MLB    MLB Daily Review

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The Art of Baseball Pranking

Baseball is a game built on tradition.

This would include a virtually endless amount of rituals and rookie hazing techniques, some more harmful than others.

One of the more innocuous ones would be the old home run silent treatment routine.

We were treated to this MLB performance art recently at Fenway Park.

Try to stifle your laughter until the end.

Good times.

Now, this sort of wackiness is normally reserved for rookies who just homered for the first time.

However, the Red Sox generously made a special exception in the case of Xander Bogaerts.

The All-Star shortstop is already in his fourth full season, but his incorrigible teammates decided to mess with him, anyway.

You see, although Bogaerts is off to a ridiculously good start to the 2017 season, he had yet to homer.

So when he finally went deep against the Rangers at Fenway, a good time was had by all.

Here are a few similar examples from other MLB dugouts:

The very old Hawk Harrelson certainly enjoyed that one. Steve Stone thought it was cute.

Here's another featuring Scooter Gennett, and it wasn't even his first homer:

And one more:

It's added value when you go to a ballgame and a mime routine breaks out in the dugout.