D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find out what it means

Hell yeah, I want a chocolate chicken pot pie! Respect mah authoritigh!!! Beefcake! Beefcake!!!

There were so many things wrong with the Cubs' series against the Braves over the weekend that I don't know where to begin. Luckily, I don't really have to, because every other bliggitty blang blog has covered every detail and every idiotic well-reasoned point of view out there in sports-intertubes-land. If you care at all, you already know all about it.

I just want to bring up one thing that seems to have been forgotten -- a little detail about the fine chunk of manflesh pictured in the photograph above -- senile senior umpire and Eric Cartman be-alike, Bruce Froemming.

Just in case you missed it, during Saturday's game, Cubs manager Lou "Hey Abbott!" Piniella made good on his promise from the previous day to argue the hell out of a call -- any call -- and proceeded to not-so-sincerely stomp around like a dinner-theatre caricature of the tantrummy eight-year-old we somehow expect grown baseball-playing men to emulate ... and apparently the crowd enjoyed it quite a bit, demonstrating their approval by littering the outfield with ... litter. (I also think Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers threw his false teeth out there, too, but that could very well have been an unfortunate accident.)

After the game, crew chief Bruce "Captain Renault" Froemming was so shocked, shocked that one of the most thrown-out managers in baseball hystery had gotten himself tossed from a game that he temporarily put down the slab of brontosaurus ribs he was snacking on long enough to recommend to MLB that Piniella be suspended for his "terrible display of disrespect."

Which was only appropriate, considering that Froemming is quite an expert on disrespect. He's such an expert, in fact, that he himself was suspended for 10 days in 2003 for calling an MLB administrator a "stupid Jew bitch."

But, hey, at least he didn't kick his hat! That would have been way over the line.