Depending on what you read on the internet, even on mainstream sites, Curt Schilling is bigoted against every form of human being who isn’t white and straight.
He wants all journalists hanged.
His words and tweets have inspired radical thoughts and acts. That includes his belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.
Again, it’s all there on the World Wide Web, where free speech flourishes. More often, though, it doesn’t flourish as much if it leans the wrong way.
And, for many, Schilling’s free speech leans the wrong way.
That has become the opinion of some of my fellow voters for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Schilling is on the ballot for the ninth time, and he was thought to be a lock for induction this year.
A player must be on 75% of all ballots submitted by voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Schilling finished with 70% of the vote in 2020.
Now, he finds himself in the same voting purgatory as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, whose candidacies are stuck in the muck as a result of having using performance-enhancing drugs during portions of their careers.
However, the reason Schilling’s Hall chances are in peril is because voters whose livelihoods are ensured by the First Amendment find distasteful the things Schilling says that are protected by ... the First Amendment.
That’s a tough square for me to circle.
Schilling believes that his right-heavy political views single-handedly are keeping him out of the Hall of Fame. A look at my Twitter timeline Wednesday, and the unwavering approval of Biden’s inauguration and the end of Trump’s term, suggests there are a lot of lefties with Hall votes.
Among the voters who have revealed they nixed Schilling for his mouth, some said it wasn’t about politics even though it’s difficult to find something controversial from Schilling that doesn’t have a political slant. Some voters said they held their nose at his politics and voted for him anyway.
Feels political, doesn’t it?
What Schilling did during his career, before Twitter was a thing, is Cooperstown-worthy.
He won more games than Boston Red Sox teammate Pedro Martinez, who is in the Hall. Schilling was a workhorse, a strikeout artist with pinpoint control, a three-time Cy Young runner-up and a six-time All-Star. He was a stalwart in the postseason, including in 2001 when he shared World Series MVP honors with Hall of Famer Randy Johnson.
And, of course, there’s the bloody sock game with the Boston Red Sox.
Schilling also once won the Roberto Clemente Award, which goes to the player who best combines sportsmanship, community involvement and on-field performance.
At a time when the past is coming back to bite people in the rear end, none of Schilling’s former teammates have stepped up to say he is racist or an otherwise rotten person. These are people who spent eight months out of the year with him. They would know.
A good deal of Hall of Fame voters are on record saying all that matters is what Schilling did on the field. The character clause that voters are asked to consider is incredibly subjective and has been for generations, which explains why many players who aren’t exactly saints are in the Hall.
Try this for subjectivity: Multiple writers who nixed Schilling in this vote because of his words did not nix Bonds and Clemens.
And that’s fine.
Just as I don’t hold how people vote for elected office against them, even when it doesn’t align with how I voted, I don’t hold how writers vote for the Hall of Fame. It’s their vote.
I did vote for Schilling, as I have in the past. He earned it with what he did on the field, as did the other seven who received my vote: Bonds, Clemens, Jeff Kent, Andruw Jones, Scott Rolen, Gary Sheffield and Billy Wagner.
Sheffield, an offensive juggernaut, and Wagner, a closer who rates as one of the best in baseball history in a role that has become critical to every championship team’s success, were new additions to my ballot after being crowded off it in the past.
This is the first time I did not vote for the maximum of 10 players.
I chose not to hold Schilling’s words against him. His shared statements, no matter their political flavor or perceived distaste, are protected by the First Amendment.
So is the job that allows me to explain why I voted for him, and why he might never get into the Hall of Fame.
