Wait, MLB Network shelved ‘Wild Thing’ … for being wild?

Strangest thing. I bought a .38 revolver and some bullets, took it home, loaded it, pulled the trigger, and the darned thing went off! Nearly killed the dog! Who knew?

So MLB Network has placed Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams, the former MLB reliever, on the bad-boy shelf after Wild Thing apparently stayed in character and caused or exacerbated an ugly hassle while coaching his 10-year-old’s baseball team.

Though the leave of absence reportedly was a mutual decision between Williams and the network, it contradicts Williams’ initial claim that he did nothing wrong. It seems MLBN wanted Williams to act wild only on MLBN’s time, dime and air.

Such is the on-going hiring process of TV and radio. The bosses purposefully hire those with reputations for outrageous-to-rotten behavior — it’s thought that there is no better way to pull the omnipotent young desensitized male demographic — then respond with noble indignation when the gun goes off.

This year, MLBN added a Chris “Mad Dog” Russo show. Why? Because of Russo’s expertise and thoughtful observations of baseball? He never previously had provided any.

He was hired for how he acts and whom he is supposed to attract. His career has been predicated on forced and furious defamations rooted in rotten guesswork, verbal recklessness and the need to make noise. You now can make a fortune just by making noise. And Russo never has been given to any greater self-accountability than an occasional, shrugging, “So what?”

But MLBN merely — and very simply — is working off the same copy of the same worn plan.

Why would NBC hire Mike Milbury as an NHL analyst? Because of his body of work as a player, coach and general manager? Or because of his reputation as an advocate of hockey as measured in pints of plasma?

Bobby Knight was hired by ESPN because of his reputation as a solid citizen? ESPN next had to bury its frequent go-to reel of Knight behaving like a creep.

What makes Turner TV so eager to indulge Charles Barkley’s behavior, including the criminal kind that would wreck others’ careers? Is it his expansive, studied basketball knowledge or because he provides more incite than insight?

Warren Sapp, a trash-talker of dubious on- and off-field character with a football resume as a leader in unsportsmanlike conduct penalties and demonstrations — dating to his University of Miami days — was just the man for the NFL Network!

If Keyshawn Johnson hadn’t successfully demanded attention by being a divisive, me-first braggart, would ESPN have hired him?

But TV is lousy with such hires. What has Ray Lewis provided ESPN? Zip. But he was hired as a guy who remorselessly head-hunted then performed exaggerated blood dances in self-tribute to his savagery. Oh, and he remains a person of great interest in an unsolved double homicide. He was there that night, even paid off the widows, but someone, thus far, has gotten away with murder.

Why did WFAN/CBS replace Don Imus with Craig Carton? For Carton’s sports expertise or for his willingness to confuse sophomoric vulgarity with comedy, to engage in childish name-calling and ad hominem attacks and the salacious objectification of women as they fall on his “hot babe” and “ugly broad” meters?

Now Mitch Williams is the latest to be hired because of his rep for uncivil behavior then sent to his room for uncivil behavior. It’s the Don Imus Syndrome. Or would MLBN have been interested in Williams had he been nicknamed “Calm Thing”?

Meanwhile, there seems to be a connection to the pattern or a pattern to the connection. Thirty-five, 40 years ago, the idea that police would preemptively be assigned to patrol youth league games would have been dismissed as preposterous. Now it’s a given.

A hassle among adults at organized kids’ games used to be rare, a comet-sighting. Now, volunteer or 20-bucks-a-game umps who would officiate for fun and as a matter of community good deed-doing, would rather sit in the dark than risk an assault by some enraged, my-kid-was-safe! father — or mother.

What changed? Could it be that the last two generations of kids raised on the ESPN/Nike, bad-is-good, worse-is-better, chest-pounding, trash-talking TV, radio, video-game and commercial marketing strategies are now the coaches?

The thoughtless, remorseless vandalization of sports — the absence of sport in our sports — has become the norm.

Kids didn’t change, they were changed. And now they’re Little League parents. Another generation of such parents is coming, bound to be worse than the last.

To suggest sports TV and radio have played no part or even just a small one is to not know what happens — and to be shocked — when the trigger’s pulled.

Mark Jackson has a muddled history with media

Fascinating, how Mark Jackson always is identified as a natural candidate big NBA gigs. As odd ducks go, he is poultry in motion.

Miscast then relegated to Bristol’s hire-first, learn-later warehouse as a studio analyst, he was hired by YES to be a Nets game analyst for the 2005-06 season. Often paired with Marv Albert, Jackson was terrific — a see-it, say-it guy.

Then, late during the final Nets game of the 2007-08 season, Jackson, on air, made TV history, of some odd duck sort. He suddenly announced this would be his last Nets telecast.

The folks at YES were left flabbergasted — and angry. He had told them nothing. They figured he would allow YES the courtesy of a heads-up.

In between, more oddities. While becoming something of a star with the Knicks, he was lost to leg surgery. As he was being wheel-chaired out of the hospital, newspaper photographers were ready.

This was an opportunity for Jackson to wave, smile, give a thumbs-up, acknowledge well-intended attention.

Instead, his adviser/friend immediately threw a coat over Jackson’s head, and Jackson left it there. They combined to create a bizarre scene, one that mimicked the response to photographers showing up at a criminal arraignment.

Then there is his fervently religious side, one that eventually brought to mind Jimmy Swaggart and Elmer Gantry. A licensed minister, Jackson has for decades chosen to jam his devout Christianity in everyone’s faces. Even his autograph carried reminders to live one’s life according to Scripture, a reading suggested.

Two years ago, while coaching the Warriors, he was caught up in an extortion scandal. There was this stripper, you see, with whom he had an extramarital affair in 2006. There were nude photos and hush payments.

And now ESPN has brought him back, this time as an in-game NBA analyst. If there was anything to forgive or overlook, it has. The quality of mercy is a valuable thing — if you can get it. Not everyone qualifies.