Curt Schilling, the former pitcher, belongs in Baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Curt Schilling the social commentator is making a damn good pitch to land in America’s Hall of Shame.
Bob Costas said it best on the MLB Network: “Curt Schilling may have talked and tweeted his way out of the Hall of Fame.”
The question is…Why? When he has so much to lose?
During the course of his 20-year Major League career, Schilling was one of the best pitchers in baseball. Pitching for five different teams, he won 216 regular season games and struck out more than 3,100 hitters. He has the best strikeout-to-walk ratio of any member of that exclusive club and has the third most 300-strikeout seasons. His postseason performances were even better: An 11-2 record, which includes competing in four World Series and winning three world championships, gives him the best winning percentage of any big league pitcher with at least 10 decisions. He truly is one of the best postseason performers in baseball history. His numbers are clearly worthy of Cooperstown.
But as we’ve seen over the years, baseball’s Hall – more than any of the others – is about more than stats and highlights. The “character clause” has been a sticking point for many a voter when trying to decide on the merits of numerous players, including guys whose stellar careers were tainted by gambling (like Pete Rose) and performance enhancing drugs (like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.)
Schilling has opened up a new category for character clause debate: Hate speech.
Like every American, Schilling has the right to speak his mind. And what goes on between his ears is 100% his business and no one can tell him what to think. Obviously, many other professional athletes, past and present, share his political views to one degree or another. The problem with Schilling is that since his retirement, he’s felt the need to promote his extreme right wing views on social media and elsewhere. If it were just his politics, there wouldn’t be an issue.
The political divide has been around for decades and isn’t going away. There actually are good people on both sides of the isle.
In Schilling’s case, it’s gone past just political campaigning. He’s said and promoted some truly vile things in recent years, like the notion that journalists should be lynched, for example. He was fired from a lucrative media gig because he publicly – and needlessly – disparaged transgender people.
Believing that Hillary Clinton should be “buried under a jail” is one thing. But actively saying it – and promoting other similar hateful sentiments – are two different things. The latter makes people (Hall of Fame voters included) wonder. How does the Hall’s “character clause” apply to these kinds of behaviors?
Again this year, Schilling narrowly missed induction into Cooperstown in this, his ninth try. He needed 75% of the votes cast, and got 71.1% this year, falling 16 votes short. And the votes were tallied at the end of December, before Schilling made yet another in a series of unfortunate social media posts. And as Costas noted, this one could be the final nail in his Hall of Fame coffin.
Over the years, the hateful rhetoric has caused some voters – journalists, remember – to leave him off their ballots despite his obvious qualifications. Now the questions is, what does this mean for next year, the former Red Sox standout’s 10th and final shot on the ballot? He will remain firmly on a precarious bubble for the next 11 months. What will he do and say during that time? True, there are plenty of Hall voters who have held their noses in the past and voted for Schilling based on his stellar baseball resume. But his most recent social media posts supporting the mob of domestic terrorists who stormed the United States capitol on January 6th is likely the final straw for a lot of them.
“You cowards sat on your hands, did nothing while liberal trash looted rioted and burned for air Jordan’s and big screens, sit back, stfu, and watch folks start a confrontation for (stuff) that matters like rights, democracy and the end of govt corruption. #itshappening”
There’s already been backlash, with some voters asking the Hall at the 11th hour if they could change their ‘yes’ votes in response. Immediately after the vote was announced, Schilling himself authored another puzzling social media post, demanding that his name be removed from next year’s ballot. That’s not within the rules, and unless there’s an executive decision made in the meantime, he will be on the 2021 ballot, like it or not. His broadside against the voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America certainly won’t help him during the next count.
With baseball immortality at stake, you have to wonder about his motives. Again, he can believe all the debunked and baseless claims about the 2020 Presidential Election and whatever the right’s conspiracy theory de jour is. But why does he have to continue to say the quiet part out loud – when he’d personally be so much better off if he didn’t?
Athletes taking political stances – some fairly extreme – isn’t new. And doing so while you’re an active player can cause significant blowback – just ask Colin Kaepernick. What’s different about Schilling is his “cause” isn’t a sympathetic one. It’s not about anyone’s life mattering. He’s not standing up for a group that’s been in any way marginalized or oppressed; No one that’s suffering or disadvantaged. It’s simply promoting what many have termed “white grievance.” Schilling is voicing his support for a group that waged a criminal assault on the nation’s very democracy. The people whose efforts he supported earlier this month are all going to end up behind bars, yet that doesn’t seem to matter to him.
There are some who want to put Schilling on the same “disqualified” list as Rose, making him ineligible for the Hall. But with just one more chance at being duly elected, and having a resume worthy of it, what would really be great is if Curt Schilling would allow himself to be part of an intervention.
Bring together some of his friends and former teammates and have everyone sit down together for a calm discussion. Over the course of a few hours try to convince him to…STFU! This wouldn’t be about trying to change his mind or his views on anything. That’d be a waste of time. Instead, it would just be an attempt to get him to stop saying the ugly stuff out loud.
They can ask him, “Curt, for just one year, terminate all your social media accounts. Get off the radio and the podcasts for a while. Go silent. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
If they succeed in that effort, they might be able to rehab his image just enough to get him those 16 votes he needs for induction. Voting is 10 months away. Time heels, right?
We all know Schilling could log back on to social media under an assumed or fake name if really needs a fix. But someone needs to convince the former baseball star to take a break from being the political commentator.
Relax. Exhale.
Spend the next 11 months preparing a moving, meaningful and well thought out acceptance speech for Cooperstown.
If only.
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