Fire in the Hole

You have most likely heard by now that Cubs manager Lou Piniella has been suspended indefinitely for kicking dirt on umpire Mark Wegner on Saturday.

Which makes us think that if a suspension of indefinite length is the going rate these days for kicking dirt on an umpire, there’s no telling what might happen to Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman after his absolutely epic tirade on Friday.

But in our humble opinion, the man should be seriously considered for the Nobel Prize.

If you haven’t already done so, watch the video above. Most of the two-plus minutes is pretty standard baseball manager flipping his lid sort of stuff. Running out of the dugout and firing the hat in the umpire’s general direction – seen it. Covering up home plate in dirt – check. Uprooting third base and chucking it into the outfield – seen that as well.

However, something we have never before seen – and now owe Mr. Wellman a tremendous debt of gratitude for having shown us – is the military-style crawl on elbows as if averting machine gun and mortar fire in the trenches followed by the grabbing of the rosin bag and flinging it like a hand grenade towards the stunned umpire at home plate.

Simply incredible.

If you find yourself wondering what the hell the significance might be of a manager pretending to fling a grenade in an umpire’s general direction, you’re probably not alone.

Then again, we probably don’t need to spend too much time over analyzing it. Generally speaking, grenades are used for blowing things up. And as far as umpire-related outbursts go, we'd say that "I want to detonate you with a compact explosive device" is above and beyond the standard "Your strike zone is worthless, Blue" sort of stuff we're used to hearing.

It appears to be only a matter of time before managers are soon storming out of the dugout doing jujitsu or capoeira the second they hit the top dugout step.

Though for some older managers – such as Braves skipper Bobby Cox – learning Brazilian dance fighting could prove to be a bit difficult. After all, at times it looks like both of Bobby's knees are going to explode mid-waddle.

So, for managers over the age of 65, we're proposing an alternative to hand-to-hand combat:

Such individuals will be permitted to carry a battle axe.