Watch The Tigers’ Justin Verlander Pull Off The Hot Foot Prank On Teammate Don Kelly

(By Glenn Davis, SportsGrid) - There are many ways for a baseball player to pull a prank on a teammate with a wad of bubble gum, but one of the most intense – not to mention unsettling-looking, when pulled off – is the hot foot. What is the hot foot, exactly? The Mets blog Hot Foot Blog (convenient) explains, “Hot Foot was inspired by the great 1986 Mets Roger McDowell and Howard Johnson who would use a wad of gum to stick a roll of cigarettes to the back of unsuspecting teammates shoes and light them on fire.”

OK, so the name makes sense now. But does anyone still do this? We’d never seen it ourselves (maybe we just weren’t watching enough baseball), and it seems we weren’t alone in that, considering the Hot Foot bloggers themselves felt the need to post this video. Thanks to Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, though, we no longer have to fear that the Hot Foot has fallen by the wayside. Verlander tried one yesterday on teammate Don Kelly. As with pretty much everything else Verlander’s done this year, he was successful. Watch the magic happen: