Every now and then during a baseball broadcast, there's a pause in the action after some nitwit jumps out of the stands and runs onto the field with a posse of cops and security people hot on his trail.

Usually, within a minute, the nitwit is tackled, roughly hustled off the field by a half-dozen or so law enforcers and charged with criminal trespass or criminal mischief. Sadly, there is no accompanying law against stupidity, probably because these days our court system would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume.

There's a reason the sports media don't show this guy running around the field, cheered on by others in the bleachers who consider this one of the game's highlights. The media rightfully ignore the disruption so as not to condone it or encourage other nitwits to do the same thing.

This misbehavior is pretty much limited to baseball. We never hear of someone running across the stage during the opera or at a Broadway show, although once in a while someone will risk his life by trying to access the stage during a rock concert. He is usually never seen again.

You don't need a PhD to figure out what drives the offenders: attention. They want it, they seek it, they crave it, they bask in it, and they'll do anything to get it.

So, when a self-described troll recently dressed himself in Ku Klux Klan attire and paraded around a Sept. 6 political rally in Mystic that was supporting Donald Trump, he was, by his own account, seeking attention. And, boy, did he get it.

Yes, writing about it today gives him even more attention, though I won't identify him by name, and fervently hope this will be the last of any coverage he or his ilk receives in this or any other media.

The troll got his first fix with an eight-paragraph story inside The Day's Sept. 8 Region section, reporting about people who were understandably upset at seeing what they thought was a Ku Klux Klansman near one of the region's busiest intersections in Mystic a day earlier.

The story quoted police saying there were no arrests and that the rally, for which organizers apparently had no permit, concluded after about an hour. A woman who drove by said she was disgusted at the sight of someone dressed in a hood and sheet, and the owner of a nearby restaurant said her customers weren't happy about it, either. The handful of Trump supporters didn't welcome the intruder either, at one point attempting to remove his hood.

The next day's editions carried a Page 1 story, 28 paragraphs in length, identifying the troll and quoting him extensively. The story went into great detail about the troll's reasons for donning the offensive outfit, how many subscribers he has for his channels, his political affiliation, how many people view his antics online and how and why he's done this before at other Trump rallies to highlight that Trump was endorsed by the KKK (Trump rejected the endorsement).

The troll said he was disappointed there weren't more than the estimated two dozen people at the Trump rally. He apparently was hoping for more attention. But — wow! — he had to have been thrilled with the extensive coverage he received from the hometown newspaper, and another, even longer piece on the Region page the following weekend about a similarly modest anti-hate rally organized by the Stonington Democratic Town Committee and an advocacy group calling itself Stonington Stands Up.

Then came the familiar column a few days later calling Trump a racist whose behavior is right down there with the KKK's and condemning local elected Republicans for the umpteenth time for not denouncing their party's presidential nominee. It went so far as to continue calling the local GOP legislators names and generated a whopping 109 gnashed-teeth posts in the comment section.

The troll, who had to have been reveling in all of this, has every right to demonstrate his disdain for Trump and to even try to bait Trump's supporters. However, there are limits to freedom of expression, like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater — or prancing around in public wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit. In fact, the latter might land him in a dentist's chair someday to get his teeth fixed.

This is not to diminish the shock, fear and anger that come with seeing people dressed in KKK garb. It's even creepy to see on television news or in a documentary. However, by overreacting, we give them the attention, encouragement and division they want.

The late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously said: "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."

If we are to apply that metaphor, the region's nose is bleeding in the aftermath of this sordid episode. Next time someone decides it would be entertaining to display a KKK outfit in public, let's treat him like the nitwit who runs onto the field during a baseball game.

He deserves nothing more.

Bill Stanley, a former reporter at The Day, is a retired vice president of Lawrence + Memorial Hospital.