Max Scherzer jokingly told the umpires to check Bryce Harper's hair for sticky substances

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The first few days of Major League Baseball’s enhanced checks for sticky substances haven’t exactly gone smoothly. We’ve already seen pitchers meet the checks with frustration. We’ve seen Sergio Romo drop his pants. And the checks almost sparked a full-out fight.

And while most of that drama took place in Tuesday night’s Nationals-Phillies game, both teams were ready to joke about it all for Wednesday’s matinee game.

Just look at how Max Scherzer was able to laugh off the sticky-substance checks a day later.

As umpires were preparing to check Nationals pitcher Erick Fedde for sticky stuff, Scherzer and Ryan Zimmerman could be seen yelling from the dugout to have the umpires check Bryce Harper’s hair.

Scherzer wants the ump to check on Bryce Harper's hair

(Via @gifs_baseball)pic.twitter.com/1wGFU0emiX

— MLB Foreign Substance Checks (@StickyCheck) June 23, 2021

Of course it was all a joke, but the umps did *actually* check Scherzer’s hair on Tuesday.

Harper, who does use a ton of hair product, had a good laugh over the heckling from his former teammates. But no worries, Harper didn’t have to get inspected.

Still, the checks have been going on for all of two days and everyone is treating it like a joke (because it sort of is). MLB had to have seen that coming.