Hey, look, it's an UmpShow.
Hey, look, it's an #UmpShow. (USATSI)

I've covered this many times over the course of the past six seasons in my time at CBS Sports, and it's a problem that's existed for decades, but that doesn't make it OK. Major League Baseball umpires continue to be the absolute worst officials in sports when it comes to deciding to inject themselves into the game and personally escalate situations instead of defusing them.

The latest came on Sunday when John Hirschbeck made a brutal strike three call on Miguel Sano and had an unbelievably quick trigger in tossing him (NOTE: My excellent colleague R.J. Anderson broke down the called strike and how bad it was). Not only that, but he saw fit to lay a "get the (eff) outta here" to Sano. Just ask Sano. TwinCities.com did:

“He told me, ‘Get the (expletive) out of here,’” Sano said. “He told me that, like, two or three times. I heard it when he told me. I said, ‘You’re not supposed to (tell) me that. You’re supposed to listen to me about that pitch.’”

Don't believe him? Grab a lip reader and find the f-bomb:

Perhaps the bigger problem here for some (frankly, I'm not greatly offended by language even though the umpire here should be the bigger person, and we'll get to that) is the body language. Hirschbeck saw fit to rip off his mask and get aggressive with Sano.

What led to that? Here's what Sano had to say, via TwinCities.com:

“I didn’t want to say anything wrong to him,” Sano said. “I only said, ‘Why did you call that pitch? You don’t feel like you want to be here?’ And he threw me out.”

OK, so there's a problem there, even if this is all of what Sano said. You don't insinuate one of two things to umpires: 1. You just want to leave; 2. You are biased in favor of the other team (which includes claiming they are being paid off).

Don't do that, MLB players, especially younger players. Just for future reference. It's totally disrespectful to their integrity. Just say the call sucked. It might sound like I'm kidding but I'm not.

Still, Hirschbeck comes off far worse here, and it's for a very simple reason. The umpires are the game officials. I'll use a few of my favorite analogies as I've done in the past.

First up, picture the umpires as the teachers and the players as students. Let's say a student starts to argue with a teacher about the homework assignment and the teacher just screams "Get the (eff) outta here!" two or three times. A bit of an overreaction, no, especially considering that the teacher is supposed to be the, you know, adult here.

Or maybe picture a parent and a child. The child starts to argue about a decision. Do you think the parent should scream "Get the (eff) outta here!" in the face of his or her child or maybe be a better role model?

And, actually, I haven't done this one before, but think of the umpires as judges in the courtroom, and now picture the judge flying off the handle at an attorney who objects to testimony. The game officials are tantamount to the game judges.

Again, I've discussed this before but I think it's important. I used to officiate high school football. When we'd go through clinics in the summer with NFL officials, one of the things they would go over is how to deal with disgruntled coaches and players. First and foremost, they always said to never speak as loud or louder. Think about it: When replying to someone who is angry, if you speak more quietly, they generally start speaking more quietly, too. It's human nature. On the flip side, what if someone is just venting and in reply the other person starts screaming back? We'll, that's only going to make matters spiral out of control.

Again, it's human nature.

Obviously, there are times the players should be ejected immediately. Obviously there are times when the players would escalate to an ejectable level even if the umpires took the above route of speaking more quietly in reply.

In those cases, I'd totally side with the umpires. Any player who selfishly gets himself ejected by going nuts has made his bed.

But the Sano example and countless ones we've seen over the years (remember Tom Hallion vs. Tampa Bay?) should be a source of embarrassment to the umpires. There's very little reason to escalate situations and possibly impact the game by ejecting important players when fans are paying their money to watch good baseball.

The umpires do a mostly thankless job, and I think the overwhelming majority are exceptional at making the correct calls. If we remove the confrontation aspect of baseball, I'd argue MLB has the best officials of any major sport, and I actually don't even think it's close. It's why I decided to write positively about Jim Joyce during the 2013 World Series.

But, man, the optics of ripping off the mask and escalating confrontations is flat-out embarrassing.

Be the official. Be the teacher. Be the adult. Be the judges you are paid to be, MLB umpires. Stop making situations worse. Walk away or verbally reply with a positive tone in professional manner. It's not overly difficult, so stop making it look that way.