Snakes and batters: reptile slithers into LA Dodgers’ dugout during MLB game

A snake slithered through the Los Angeles Dodgers’ dugout during game two of the National League Championship Series on Monday.

The reptile appeared in the top of the fifth inning of the Dodgers’ 7-3 loss to the New York Mets. It wasn’t big enough to put a scare into anyone.

“I was hoping it was a rally snake and we turned a rally around right after that,” the reliever Brent Honeywell said. “But just something to get the boys moving a little different [after] everything else.”

The snake was wrapped in a towel and removed by a member of the grounds crew.

“We’ve had Snakes on a Plane, Snakes on a Train and the latest Hollywood hit: Snake in the Dugout,” joked Fox’s play-by-play commentator Joe Davis.

The visitor didn’t have the impact of the goose that landed on the field at Dodger Stadium during another playoff game, in 2022. (It was also wrapped in a towel and taken away; a team representative told the Los Angeles Times it was released but didn’t offer details.)

That goose was celebrated as a good-luck charm for the San Diego Padres, who went on to win the division series against their rivals. Padres fans dubbed it the Rally Goose, not to be confused with the St Louis Cardinals’ Rally Squirrel, who scurried across home plate in the city in 2011 and caused a commotion. The Cardinals won that playoff series and the World Series afterward.

Other animals have been less a auspicious presence. Perhaps the most famous in baseball history is a goat who, with his human companion, was kicked out of a Chicago Cubs game in 1945. The human later sent a telegram to the Cubs’ owner declaring a curse on the team. The Cubs lost the World Series that year and didn’t win it again until 2016.

What, exactly, the snake portends is unclear – the Dodgers began scoring runs after its appearance, but they still lost the game.

“I got out there, and he’s up in the corner – nobody could get him out of there,” Honeywell told MLB.com, which pointed out that the same player had also encountered an alligator in a Florida minor-league dugout in 2015. “But that’s what we need every now and again – to see some crazy stuff like this.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting