Christine Brennan

USA TODAY Sports

Curt Schilling’s firing has been a work in progress for many months.

ESPN could have gotten rid of him at the end of the 2015 baseball season for his tweet equating “Muslim extremists” with the Nazi regime in Germany, but it did not, choosing only to suspend him.

The network might have dumped him last month for saying Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, “should be buried under a jail somewhere,” but if it punished him at all, that remains a secret.

This week, Schilling went on a Facebook tirade against access to public facilities for transgender people. He shared a bizarre photo, then went after people who were angry with him, saying they should blame themselves for being offended.

For more than a day, ESPN executives pondered what Schilling said and did. “We are taking this matter very seriously and are in the process of reviewing it,” the network said.

Finally, on its third opportunity, ESPN did what it should have done late last summer, and again last month, and got rid of the guy.

ESPN fires Curt Schilling following anti-transgender post on Facebook

“ESPN is an inclusive company,” the network said in a statement Wednesday evening. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”

Schilling apologists will say that the former major league pitcher was fired because of political correctness, but they will be wrong. They will say he was only exercising his First Amendment right to freedom of speech, but they will be wrong again.

While it is true that Schilling’s opinions were appalling, insensitive and nasty, over and over again, there was more to this firing than the hatred contained in his words.

Schilling broke a very simple if unwritten media rule: A member of the sports media should cover and comment on sports news, not actively try to make news.

Schilling didn’t know when to be quiet. He didn’t know when to stop. When you’re a member of the news media, as I have been for years, you censor yourself dozens of times a day. You keep off-the-record conversations private. You keep a scoop to yourself until you can responsibly report it. You listen to others give an opinion rather than always give yours. And you actually control yourself when you get over your keyboard.

This behavior has a name that Schilling probably wouldn’t recognize.

It’s called professionalism.

Why would a cable TV baseball analyst think anyone wanted to hear anything he had to say beyond what’s up with someone’s slider?

Because he had no filter. Or, for that matter, good judgment. Schilling was a loose cannon, a detriment to his employer.

ESPN finally made the right call to fire Curt Schilling

Last month, when he went on Kansas City’s 610 Sports Radio and commented about Clinton, it wasn’t funny. When you’re “buried under a jail,” you might not actually be alive anymore. What a terrible thing for a public figure to say in public about someone who requires massive Secret Service protection every minute of every day.

The sad fact is that if Schilling never existed, someone would have had to create him specifically for this time in our cultural history. Has there been a more perfect match than this: the man who cannot stop himself from sharing his most recent repulsive opinion and the gift of a vast technological receptacle that can gather his thoughts and disseminate them to every single one of us?

Had Schilling been born 30 years earlier, he would have been relegated to rants over his cereal bowl at the breakfast table, his only audience the few people on Earth who share his last name. Lucky for them, they could get up and leave for school or work.

ESPN finally got up and left Schilling on Wednesday night. We’re all the better for it.