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Baseball players tend to have a bit more free time on their hands than the average professional athlete, and there are plenty of stories about guys going out of their way to find ways to amuse themselves—including a pretty wild tale involving a couple of members of the Dodgers who engaged in a prank war for the ages.
The MLB is obviously far from the only league where players have to keep their head on a swivel if they don’t want their teammates to have some fun at their expense, but for some reason, those practical jokes seem to be a bit more widespread in the world of baseball.
For the most part, pranks can be broken down into the two categories that differentiated the shenanigans of the rival factions in Super Troopers: “cheeky and fun” and “tragic and cruel.”
The ones that fall in the first category are the light-hearted goofs that don’t cause any serious physical harm or long-term psychological damage, while the ones under that second umbrella tend to check at least one of those boxes—and it’s safe to say the pranks Don Drysdale and Ken Boyer pulled on each other back in the day do exactly that.
A prank war between MLB teammates led to one of them reaching out to Frank Sinatra to organize a fake mob hit
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The tale in question comes courtesy of Artie Lange, who profanely relayed the saga he learned about courtesy of legendary Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker on a podcast.
The story revolves around Don Drysdale and Ken Boyer, who respectively pitched and played third base alongside each other for the Los Angeles Dodgers for a couple of seasons toward the end of the 1960s.
The prank war apparently started during a road trip in Atlanta where Boyer decided to have some fun at Drysdale’s expense.
The pitcher supposedly had a lady friend in the city whom he was planning to visit after the game, and Boyer (whose younger brother Clete played for the Braves at the time) got a couple of detectives to come into the locker room, tell a lie about the woman in question being underaged, and act like they were going to take him to the station before letting him in on the gag.
Well, it’s safe to say that didn’t sit well with Drysdale, and he immediately started plotting his revenge—and got some with the help of a diehard Dodgers fan you’re probably familiar with: Frank Sinatra.
Drysdale called Sinatra and told him he was seeking retribution before Ol’ Blue Eyes told him he had the perfect idea, which involved using some of his well-documented mob connections to recruit a couple of “goons” who agreed to give Boyer the scare of his life.
Based on what Uecker told Lange, the prank began when the stooges arrived at Dodger Stadium and ambushed Boyer as he was walking to his car before putting a bag over his head, restraining his limbs, and tossing him into the trunk of their vehicle.
They proceeded to drive into the desert before dragging Boyer out and threatening to shoot him and bury him in the desert over some transgression he obviously wasn’t aware of. They spent around 30 minutes committing to the bit and drove Boyer to the point of tears before coming clean and letting him know Drysdale and Sinatra had orchestrated the entire thing.
That certainly escalated quickly.