Bryce Harper at center of benches clearing near-brawl in Phillies-Giants

Bryce Harper and, really, the entirety of the Philadelphia Phillies in recent years have never been shy about wearing their emotions on their sleeves. Sometimes, that's endearing and quite admirable to see how much they care. And other times, it can lead to the benches clearing.

Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco was an instance in the latter category.

In the top of the fourth inning of the clash between the Phillies and Giants, young San Francisco starter Kyle Harrison, the organization's former top prospect, threw up and in on Harper in what did not appear to be an intentional act. However, the very next pitch was also up near Harper's head as well, and that's when things started to pop off.

Bryce Harper at center of bench-clearing Phillies-Giants near-brawl

Harper had already been jawing at Harrison after the first pitch, which then bled to the rest of the team after the second pitch. And then chaos somewhat erupted, though we didn't see any punches thrown. Both benches cleared with Harper being pushed out of the mix and as more pushing in the scrum started but never escalated further.

All in all, nothing too bad came from this as things seemed to simmer down. However, even the Phillies announcers seemed to agree that Harrison's inside pitches were not intentional. And they even insinuated that Harper might've overreacted.

This isn't the first time we've seen Harper's blood get boiling in the Bay Area either.

Back in 2017 when Harper was still a member of the Washington Nationals, then-Giants reliever Hunter Strickland hit the outfielder with an inside pitch, which led to Harper charging the mound and trading punches. Of course, the benches poured onto the field then too when tempers were flaring much more than they were on Thursday.

Alas, this is probably just about things getting a bit too heated and Harper probably blew things out of proportion just a bit. Having said that, I think we've learned over the years that the Phillies superstar is not going to take kindly to this sort of stuff and a brawl or near-brawl is almost always in the cards whenever it does.

Especially when in San Francisco, apparently.