Jason Kipnis and Mike Napoli erect Jobu shrine in Indians’ clubhouse

Jason Kipnis and Mike Napoli have both had their struggles at times this season, but neither has gone through a prolonged slump at the plate that would seem to require going to extremes, such as, well, Voodoo.

Apparently, one or both of the aforementioned Cleveland Indians thought it might help themselves or the club to bring Jobu statues into the Progressive Field locker room and construct a small shrine to the fictional doll made popular in the 1989 film “Major League.” We celebrated the film’s 25th anniversary here two years ago.

In the movie, slugger Pedro Cerrano practices Voodoo and prays to Jobu because his bats are sick and cannot hit a curveball. It’s unclear if Kipnis and Napoli believe a similar plague has befallen their bats, but Kipnis did tell Paul Hoynes of cleveland.com that having the makeshift shrine to Jobu in the locker room between his and Napoli’s lockers seems to be working.

Shrine to Jobu erected between Mike Napoli and Jason Kipnis’ locker. pic.twitter.com/MuuNDUKBDf

— paul hoynes (@hoynsie) June 22, 2016

Napoli’s agent gave him a Jobu statue in spring training and Kipnis also contributed a statue to the shrine, which also contains small bottles of rum and a sweater with a picture of Jobu and the famous line from the movie, “It is very bad to drink Jobu’s rum. Very bad.”

Kipnis said they first gave Jobu a bottle of airport vodka (really guys?) before switching to Bacardi rum, which seems to be working for them. The Indians are in first place in the American League Central Division by 2.5 games over defending world champion Kansas City.

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

– – – – – – –

Kyle Ringo is a contributing writer to Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo