Nine years, nine rejections, nine punches to the gut. But there won’t be a 10th, says a defiant Curt Schilling, who has asked the baseball writers who vote on the sports’ Hall of Fame inductees to take his name off next year’s ballot.
The outspoken former Red Sox pitcher says it’s his conservative views on politics that are keeping him out of Cooperstown, not a lack of accomplishment on the mound. Schilling was just 16 votes short Tuesday night — the closest of anyone in this year’s eligible class.
“It’s a white male, liberal, college-educated group of men passing judgment on me,” Schilling told Newsmax in a recent interview slamming the hall’s gatekeepers, the Baseball Writers Association of America. “I saw them work, I saw them at my locker night after night. I played 22 years, and you can make an argument I played with and against thousands of players. Not a single player, not a single clubhouse guy, umpire, coach, fan, anyone has ever made a claim that I said something racist, transphobic, homophobic, any phobic, ever.”
As another year passed with no one selected to join those ranks — for the second time in eight years but only the ninth time since 1936 — there’s something off the field at work. How players performed on the diamond matters; but so does how they act off it.
That’s why Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, two stars who admitted or were accused of using steroids, didn’t earn the necessary 75% vote required to make the Hall of Fame. That’s nothing new, either. Proven or suspected performance-enhancing drug users are often seen as a stain on the sport’s integrity.
In Schilling’s case, there are arguments to be made regarding his career performances, and whether those exploits make him worthy of a place in the Hall of Fame. Schilling, though, feels this latest snub has more to do with his support of President Donald Trump than whether his 216 career wins are impressive enough.
Schilling is vocal in his support of right-wing causes, and believes that support has been unfairly held against him in the past.
ESPN suspended Schilling in 2015 after the six-time all-star pitcher shared a meme on Twitter that said, “It’s said only 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?”
The next year, ESPN fired Schilling from his analyst position after he posted an image critical of transgender individuals. The company called Schilling’s post “unacceptable.” Schilling has also tweeted a photo of a T-shirt with the words: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required.”
His caption read, “so much awesome,” but Schilling later said the post was “sarcasm.”
In a NJ.com story Thursday, former New York Yankees slugger and Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson expressed little sympathy for Schilling missing a Cooperstown invitation once more.
“I would say to Curt, ‘Look at what you did. You took yourself out of the Hall of Fame because of what you say and how to express yourself and how you think,’” Jackson said. “Freedom of speech is great, but we can’t have a country with white supremacy, Nazis, Black Panthers, racist stuff and anti-Semitics. We can’t have people wearing swastikas because it’s a freedom of expression.”
Still, in a letter to the Hall of Fame that Schilling released on Facebook on Tuesday night, he took aim and fired a fastball at the journalists who vote for Hall of Fame inductees. Schilling has just one year of eligibility remaining to be voted in, but he’s making sure he won’t be snubbed again in 2022.
“Nothing, zero, none of the claims being made by any of the writers hold merit,” part of Schilling’s post read. “In my 22 years playing professional baseball in the most culturally diverse locker rooms in sports I’ve never said or acted in any capacity other than being a good teammate.
In the post, Schilling alludes to some existing members of the Hall of Fame whose personal conduct didn’t prevent them from achieving baseball immortality. Ty Cobb has been accused of being racist, Paul Molitor admitted he tried cocaine and Gaylord Perry used more than guile to get batters out — spit, Vaseline and other substances helped.
“I’ve certainly been exposed to racism and sexism and homophobia as it’s part of who human beings are. I’ve played with and talked with gay teammates. I’ve played with wife beaters, adulterers … drug addicts and alcoholics. I’ve never hit a woman, driven drunk, done drugs, PEDs or otherwise, assaulted anyone or committed any sort of crime.”
In response, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America recommended to the Hall of Fame’s directors on Wednesday that Schilling should remain on the ballot next year.
Schilling’s vote tallies have risen each year since 2017, when 45% of voters selected him. Since then, Schilling has jumped to 70% in 2020 and 71.1% in 2021. He’s on the verge of making the Hall of Fame in his final year, just 16 votes shy.
There’s debate whether his statistics put him in the Hall of Fame realm, but there are few other pitchers who proved as reliable for as long as Schilling.
He won three World Series titles, earned six all-star nods and won at least 15 regular season games seven times. He has a career 3.46 ERA and 1.137 WHIP, and his postseason numbers are even better — a 2.23 ERA with an 11-2 win-loss record.
His bloody sock game, overcoming an injured tendon in Game 6 of the 2004 American League Championship Series to allow four hits and one run, goes down in baseball lore. Schilling rests at No. 26 all-time for pitchers in Wins Above Replacement and he’s 15th all-time in strikeouts, even though he sits at No. 86 in career wins with 216.
Perhaps those statistics don’t meet the Cooperstown standard. Or perhaps if Schilling was Hall eligible 20 years ago, before he could spout his opinions on social media, he wouldn’t be in this position — he’d be in the Hall of Fame.
“The media has created a Curt Schilling that does not and has never existed,” Schilling wrote.
• Andy Kostka can be reached at akostka@washingtontimes.com.
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