LOS ANGELES — 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. Honeywell and Smith were returning to the dugout after retiring the New York Mets in the fifth. Lehmann was greeting them from inside the dugout.

They looked down and gave the snake the right of way. A Dodgers clubhouse attendant swooped in and deftly collected the serpentine intruder in a towel.

Could it have been an omen? An AI overview said that seeing a snake when you are down can be considered a positive omen, symbolizing transformation, rebirth and renewal.

Sure enough, Max Muncy homered to put the Dodgers on the board in the bottom of the fifth and a two-run single by Tommy Edman in the sixth cut the deficit to 6-3.

Alas, the Dodgers rally stopped there and the Mets closed out the game to win 7-3 and knot the best-of-seven series at one win apiece.

All that was left were pithy comments, beginning with this call from Fox play-by-play commentator Joe Davis: “We’ve had ‘Snakes on a Plane’, ‘Snakes on a Train’ and the latest Hollywood hit: ‘Snake in the Dugout.’ ”

On X, comments ranged from obligatory nods toward infiltration by the Arizona Diamondbacks to wondering if Shohei Ohtani‘s deceitful former translator and inveterate gambler Ippei Mizuhara had returned.

More than one referred to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts claim after the NLDS Game 2 that San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado threw a ball in his direction, saying, “That was very bothersome. If it was intended at me, I would be very — it’s pretty disrespectful.”

After the Dodgers won the series, Roberts admitted his comments about Machado might have been a bit of gamesmanship to motivate his players. So, of course, a social media comment posited that Roberts said of the snake, “I was told that [Mets shortstop Francisco] Lindor did this in between innings, it has our guys really fired up.”

Jokes aside, Honeywell wasn’t fazed, throwing two more scoreless innings. After all, he’d seen a far larger and more menacing reptile in a dugout.

In 2015 when he was a Tampa Bay Rays minor leaguer, Honeywell stepped into the dugout to see his teammates gawking at a 10-foot alligator hiding under the bench.

“I got out there, and he’s up in the corner — nobody could get him out of there,” Honeywell told MLB.com. “But that’s what we need every now and again — to see some crazy stuff like this.”

He hoped the snake would be a good omen, telling reporters after the game, “I hoped it was a rally snake, and we pushed a few across right after that, but ... "

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.