Exactly how good was Adam Wainwright’s prank on Skip Schumaker?

Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright is in a prank war with former teammate and current Padres first base coach Skip Schumaker, and things seem to be heating up. It started the last time St. Louis was in San Diego and when the Padres made the return trip Wainwright saw a chance to continue the back-and-forth and jumped at the opportunity.

Before we get into how good this latest prank was, let’s cover how it all started. A few months ago, Schumaker visited his dear friend and old teammate Wainwright at the Cardinals’ team hotel in San Diego and decided to be nice and order his buddy some breakfast.

At the crack of dawn the next morning. To wake him up. Good prank! I’d rate it a solid 5. Funny without too much heavy lifting, and suitably annoying without completely ruining someone’s day.

As good as that one was, Wainwright’s prank in return was much better. When the Padres visited the Cardinals, Wainwright had someone grab Schumaker’s street clothes from his locker and then had the team staff do this to it:

Wainwright then autographed the newly created “jersey” to his biggest fan and wrote “now we’re even.”

This is a good prank. It isn’t ruining clothing that means something to Skip or anything, it’s just a polo shirt and pants, and the timing meant that he then had to talk to press and get on the team bus dressed like that. Or go in his uniform, I guess.

It’s a 7, maybe an 8. It involves multiple people supporting the plan, an embarrassing clothing element, and the added note of the pants numbers are truly the cherry on top. There’s nothing here that is too embarrassing or too mean.

Schumaker will have to make a trip to Macy’s for some new pants though, so it’s a minor inconvenience. Even he admitted it was a solid prank though, saying, ““This is a good one. I’m impressed. It’s really – really – good.”

As far as the being “even” part goes, Wainwright might not want to call this one over just yet. Schumaker said of the prank war’s status “Should be fun. He’ll be on red alert. High alert for the season.”

The two teams don’t play each other again this season, so whatever the retaliation is it will have to be done from afar. Even better.