Many big-league baseball players — too many of them, in fact — need to have their attitudes adjusted before they suit up for games.

I’m talking about how players seem to relish showing up players on opposing teams and the very hard feelings those antics stir up.

Take a look at this link.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/milwaukee-brewers-carlos-gomez-atlanta-braves-freddie-freeman-ejected-in-1st-092513

Milwaukee Brewers star Carlos Gomez was hit by a pitch thrown by the Atlanta Braves’ Paul Malcolm. That was three months ago. Gomez thinks Malcolm hit him on purpose. So, to pay the guy back, Gomez hit a first-inning home run last night against Malcolm. But instead of taking off immediately on his home run trot, he stood in the batter’s box, flipped his bat, glared at Malcolm and then took off. His antics spurred a bench-clearing brawl. Gomez got ejected before he had a chance to cross the plate.

I read the story and was reminded immediately of a radio interview I heard once with Hall of Fame third baseman Mike Schmidt, who hit 548 home runs during his career with the Philadelphia Phillies. Schmidt, interviewed on the Jim Rome Show, talked at length about the poor sportsmanship many players show when they hit home runs. They stand in the batter’s box and admire the flight of the ball they’ve just tagged. It amounts to showing up a pitcher. If I can recall it correctly, Schmidt was talking specifically about the antics of Barry Bonds.

Then he noted what might happen to hitters who would try something like that in the old days against the likes of Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale, two of the meanest men ever to throw a hardball from the pitchers mound to home plate. If a hitter tried to show either of those two Hall of Famers up, Schmidt said, they’d both be heading for the dirt to avoid getting beaned the next time they came to the plate.

You just shouldn’t do that.

That was then. Today’s game is much different than the one I used to enjoy watching. Whenever guys named Mantle, Mays or Aaron would hit ’em out of the park, they’d start their jog around the bases, receive greetings from teammates and head for the dugout. These days, it becomes a sideshow.

As the Gomez-Malcolm encounter also shows, it also becomes a disgraceful exhibition of poor sportsmanship.