The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
On the field, Curt Schilling was at his best when the spotlight shone the brightest. A top starter on four pennant winners and three World Series champions, he has a strong claim as the best postseason pitcher of his generation. Founded on pinpoint command of his mid-90s fastball and a devastating splitter, his regular season dominance enhances his case for Cooperstown. He’s one of just 18 pitchers to strike out more than 3,000 hitters, and is the owner of the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio in modern major league history.
That said, Schilling never won a Cy Young award and finished with “only” 216 regular-season wins. While only one starter with fewer than 300 wins was elected during the 1992-2014 span (Bert Blyleven), four have been tabbed since then, two in 2015 (Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and two in ’19 (Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina), suggesting that’s far less of an obstacle than before.
Schilling was something of a late bloomer who didn’t click until his age-25 season, after he had been traded three times. He spent much of his peak pitching in the shadows of even more famous (and popular) teammates, which may have helped to explain his outspokenness. Former Phillies manager Jim Fregosi nicknamed him “Red Light Curt” for his desire to be at the center of attention when the cameras were rolling, while Phillies general manager Ed Wade said, “Schilling is a horse every fifth day and a horse’s ass the other four.” Whether expounding about politics, performance-enhancing drugs, the QuesTec pitch-tracking system, or a cornerstone of his legend, Schilling wasn’t shy about telling the world what he thought.
That desire eventually extended beyond the mound. Schilling used his platform to raise money for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and, after a bout of oral cancer, recorded public service announcements on the dangers of smokeless tobacco. In 1996, USA Today named him “Baseball’s Most Caring Athlete.” But in the years since his retirement, and particularly over the past half-decade, his actions and inflammatory rhetoric on social media have turned him from merely a controversial and polarizing figure to one who has continued to create problems for himself.
Normally, that wouldn’t be germane to the Hall of Fame discussion, but Schilling’s promotion of a tweet promoting the lynching of journalists — yes, really — during the tense 2016 presidential campaign brought his momentum to a screeching halt. He had climbed from 38.8% in 2013 to 52.3% in ’16, even while taking a backseat to a quintet of pitchers — Martinez, Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson — whose hardware and milestones led to first-ballot entries. Due in large part to his social media and political battles, he slipped to 45.0% in 2017, as several previous supporters left him off their ballots even when they had space to spare, either explicitly or implicitly citing the character clause. Even while maintaining his noxious public persona, he recovered his lost ground and then some, reaching 60.9% in 2019 and 70.0% last year. With any other candidate, that’s “gimme” territory, but as of last week, Schilling was promoting election conspiracy theories and calls for martial law on his Twitter account, not to mention comparing the nation’s top infectious disease expert to a Nazi — all of which not only underscored his capacity for self-sabotage but pushed his public persona into its darkest corner yet. Not every voter is willing to follow him there, even if they’ve supported his candidacy in the past.
| Pitcher | Career WAR | Peak WAR | JAWS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curt Schilling | 79.5 | 48.6 | 64.0 |
| Avg. HOF SP | 73.3 | 50.0 | 61.6 |
| W-L | SO | ERA | ERA+ |
| 216-146 | 3,116 | 3.46 | 127 |
The son of a career Army man, Schilling was born in Anchorage, Alaska, on November 14, 1966 into a family that bounced around the U.S. before settling in Phoenix. Though he impressed scouts at a tryout camp held by the Reds after his junior year at Shadow Mountain High School, he didn’t make the varsity squad until his senior year, and went undrafted out of school. After enrolling at Yavapai Junior College in Arizona, he pitched in the Junior College World Series, was chosen by the Red Sox in the second round of the now-bygone January draft in 1986, and signed for a $20,000 bonus.
Schilling put himself on the prospect map in 1987 by leading the Class-A South Atlantic League in strikeouts at age 20, but midway through the next year, he was traded to the Orioles along with outfielder Brady Anderson in a deadline deal for pitcher Mike Boddicker. He debuted in the majors on September 7, 1988, with a seven-inning, three-run performance against the Red Sox, but he was torched in his three other starts, finishing with a 9.82 ERA. After being knocked around during a similar cup-of-coffee the following year, he stuck around Baltimore as a reliever for about half of the 1990 season, putting up a 2.54 ERA in 46 innings. Even so, he didn’t exactly impress Orioles manager Frank Robinson, his first big-league skipper, with his personal appearance. Recounted the pitcher in a 1998 Sports Illustrated profile:
“I walk in, I got the earring and half my head shaved, a blue streak dyed in it. He says, ‘Sit down,’ and then just cocks his head and stares at me for a while. Finally, he says, ‘What’s wrong with you, son?’ I just sit there and act dumb and say, ‘Huh? What do you mean?’”
Schilling lost the earring and the blue streak, but his lack of maturity persisted. Summoned from the bullpen in a September 1990 game, he admitted to not having paid attention to the opposing lineup. “The ‘Who’s Up?’ story spread through the organization until it became synonymous with his name. “Million-dollar arm. Ten-cent head,” wrote Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. That winter, the Orioles sent Schilling to the Astros (along with outfielder Steve Finley and pitcher Pete Harnisch) for first baseman Glenn Davis, a deal that’s still reviled in Baltimore, less for the future stardom of those departing than for Davis’ flop with the Orioles.
Schilling was not a big hit in Houston, either. After spending the 1991 season in the bullpen, he was traded to Philadelphia for Jason Grimsley just before Opening Day the following year. Six weeks into the season, he finally got another shot to start and was outstanding, completing 10 of 26 turns with four shutouts. He finished the 1992 season 14–11 with a 2.35 ERA in 226.1 innings; his ERA and 5.9 WAR both ranked fourth in the league.
Schilling’s ERA ballooned to 4.02 (99 ERA+) in 1993 as a full-time member of the rotation, but his 186 strikeouts ranked fourth in the league. More importantly, he helped Philadelphia win its first division title in a decade, then earned NLCS MVP honors against Atlanta with two strong, eight-inning starts in which he allowed a combined three earned runs and struck out 19, though he received no-decisions in both. Roughed up in the World Series opener against the Blue Jays, Schilling rebounded to throw a 147-pitch, five-hit shutout in Game 5 to stave off elimination, though the Jays won the Series on Joe Carter’s homer in Game 6 nonetheless.
The combination of the 1994–95 players’ strike and a trio of surgeries — for a bone spur in his elbow, torn cartilage in his left knee and, most seriously, a torn labrum and frayed rotator cuff — limited Schilling to just 56 starts from 1994-96, but he returned to action with improved velocity and continued to miss bats. He whiffed 182 hitters in 183.1 innings in 1996, and though he made just 26 starts overall, his eight complete games led the league. Both his 3.19 ERA (134 ERA+) and his 4.9 WAR cracked the top 10.
Despite the fact that the Phillies had suffered three straight losing seasons, including a 95-loss campaign in 1996, Schilling chose to sign a below-market, three-year, $15.45 million extension in April 1997. While the hapless team went 68–94, he went 17–11 with a 2.97 ERA (143 ERA+) in 254.1 innings and a league-leading 319 strikeouts, the highest total in the majors since Nolan Ryan‘s 341 in 1977 and the most in the NL since Sandy Koufax’s 382 in 1965. He made his first All-Star team and placed fourth both in WAR (6.3) and in the Cy Young voting, losing out to Martinez, who struck out 305 with a 1.90 ERA for the Expos.
The next year, Schilling became the first pitcher since J.R. Richard in 1978 and ’79 to notch at least 300 strikeouts in back-to-back seasons. He finished with a league-leading 300, and his 268.2 innings and 15 complete games — still the highest total since 1992 — paced the circuit as well; his 6.2 WAR again ranked fourth. The mileage soon caught up to him. Though he earned All-Star honors for the third straight year in 1999 — starting the game for the NL squad, even — Schilling made just three starts after July 23 due to shoulder inflammation, underwent off-season surgery to tighten his shoulder capsule, and didn’t make another regular-season appearance until April 30, 2000. Though not as dominant as in 1997 and ’98, he pitched reasonably well. With the Phillies en route to a 97-loss season, he agreed to waive his no-trade clause and was sent to Arizona for a four-player package on July 26. The Diamondbacks, tied for first place in the NL West at the time of the trade, ultimately fell short of a playoff spot.
With Schilling and lefty Randy Johnson forming the league’s best one-two punch, Arizona won the division in 2001. Schilling set career highs with 22 wins and 8.8 WAR and struck out 293 hitters in 256.2 innings, walking just 37 for an eye-popping 7.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He would have waltzed home with the Cy Young award had Johnson not struck out 372 and won 21 games himself en route to the third of four straight Cy wins; Schilling placed second in the vote.
More importantly, the Diamondbacks won the NL West, and Schilling built on that dominant regular season by sparkling in the playoffs. In the first two rounds against the Cardinals and the Braves, respectively, he threw three complete-game victories and struck out 30, allowing just three runs. In the World Series against a Yankees team seeking its fourth straight championship, he yielded one run in seven innings in a Game 1 win, then duplicated that performance on three days of rest in Game 4. He was in position to get the win in that game too, until Diamondbacks closer Byung-Hyun Kim allowed a game-tying, two-run homer to Tino Martinez in the ninth, then Derek Jeter’s walk-off solo shot in the 10th.
The Series wound up stretching to a Game 7, with Schilling again taking the ball on three days of rest. He held the Yankees scoreless for the first six innings but departed in the eighth, trailing 2–1 after surrendering a homer to Alfonso Soriano. Johnson came out of the bullpen in relief, and Arizona rallied for two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning against Mariano Rivera to win the title. Schilling shared co-MVP honors with Johnson (and soon enough, Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year honors as well). For the postseason, he had put up a 1.12 ERA, setting records for innings (48.1 innings, surpassed by Madison Bumgarner in 2014) and strikeouts (56), and walking just six.
Schilling was nearly as outstanding in 2002, with 8.6 WAR, 23 wins, and 316 strikeouts with a 9.6 strikeout-to-walk ratio, the second of five times he’d lead his league in that category from 2001-06. “He’s Picasso with a machine gun,” marveled Blue Jays pitcher Dan Plesac, adding, “The command of his fastball, to all four quadrants of the plate, [is] like no power pitcher in years.” Schilling’s WAR, wins, strikeouts, and Cy Young vote total took a back seat only to Johnson.
Following a 2003 season in which he was limited to 24 starts by appendicitis and two fractured metacarpals (courtesy of a pair of comeback shots in the same game), Schilling waived his no-trade clause for a deal to the Red Sox, who were fresh off their agonizing ALCS loss to the Yankees on Aaron Boone’s walk-off homer. As part of the five-player trade, he signed a three-year, $37.5 million extension with a $13 million vesting option contingent on the Red Sox winning the World Series, something that hadn’t happened since 1918 (the clause actually ran afoul of MLB’s contract rules).
Pairing with Martinez as Boston’s co-ace, the 37-year-old Schilling put up another banner season, with 21 wins, a 3.26 ERA (148 ERA+ in hitter-friendly Fenway Park), and 203 strikeouts. He earned All-Star honors for the sixth time, but a torn tendon sheath in his right ankle hampered him as the postseason came around. Following an unexceptional Division Series start against the Angels, he was chased by the Yankees after just three innings in Game 1 of the ALCS. It didn’t appear as though the injury would matter once New York built a 3–0 series lead, but when the Sox clawed their way back, Schilling took the ball for Game 6 in the Bronx.
The day before the start, doctors performed an experimental procedure — first tried on a cadaver — to secure a tendon in place using three stitches; TV shots that night routinely captured the blood in Schilling’s ankle seeping through his sock. With the Yankees neglecting to challenge his injury by bunting, his body held together long enough for him to turn in a seven-inning, one-run performance, helping the Sox force a Game 7, which Boston won handily. He threw six innings of one-run ball against the Cardinals in Game 2 of the World Series, helping Boston to its first world championship in 86 years.
Despite off-season surgery, Schilling’s ankle continued to trouble him well into the following year. Splitting his time between the rotation and closing — something he’d done regularly only in early 1991 — he finished with an ugly 5.69 ERA in just 93.1 innings. He rebounded to throw 204 innings of 3.97 ERA (120 ERA+) ball in 2006, striking out 183 and finishing with a stellar 6.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but the Red Sox missed the playoffs. Following a strong start in 2007, his season unraveled after he fell one out shy of no-hitting the A’s on June 7; he lost six weeks to shoulder inflammation. Schilling struggled before mustering some semblance of his old form in the postseason. He threw seven shutout innings in the Division Series clincher against the Angels, rebounded from an ALCS Game 2 pounding by the Indians to yield two runs over seven innings in Game 6 and wobbled through 5.1 innings in Game 2 of the World Series against the Rockies — another sweep, as it turned out.
He never pitched a competitive game again. Schilling signed an incentive-laden one-year, $8 million deal to return to Boston in 2008, but further shoulder problems that winter led to a public battle with the team over his treatment. He didn’t undergo surgery to repair his biceps tendon and labrum until June, and couldn’t rehab in time to rejoin the team. The following spring, he announced his retirement.
…
Schilling finished with 216 wins, a lower total than all but 17 of the 65 starting pitchers in the Hall of Fame, only four of whom (Halladay, Koufax, Smoltz, and Don Drysdale) pitched in the majors during the post-1960 expansion era. The BBWAA voters have taken a long time to accept the idea that pitcher wins aren’t the ideal measure of success in a modern era where it’s understood that offensive, defensive, and bullpen support are major factors in the compilation of those precious W’s. After electing Fergie Jenkins (284 career wins and seven 20-win seasons) in 1991, it took until 2011 — when Blylelven (287 wins) was elected — for another starter with fewer than 300 victories to gain entry via the writers. Only in the past decade, with the writers electing Mussina (280 wins), Martinez (219), Smoltz (213), and Halladay (203), and the Modern Baseball Era Committee adding Jack Morris (254), has the tide appeared to turn. Morris aside, those starters pitched in the highest scoring era since the 1930s, and more than held their own against lineups much deeper than their predecessors faced, working deep into counts to rack up high strikeout totals before yielding to increasingly specialized bullpens. The shape of their accomplishments may be different than the even larger cohort of pitchers from the 1960s and ’70s who helped set that 300-or-bust standard, but they belong alongside them in Cooperstown just the same. Martinez, Smoltz, and Halladay went in without a fuss, while Mussina took six years, but all of them have helped to open the door for Schilling and today’s top starters, whose diminishing workloads may preclude runs at milestone win totals.
Even so, Schilling’s candidacy has far more than his regular season win total going for it. He was 11–2 with a 2.23 ERA in 133.1 postseason innings covering 19 starts, helping his teams to four pennants and three championships; in the World Series alone, he was 4–1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven starts totaling 48 innings. Other pitchers of his era racked up more postseason appearances and wins, but among starters from the post-1960 expansion era with at least 100 postseason innings, only Bumgarner (2.11) has a lower ERA. Among post-1960 pitchers with at least 40 innings in the World Series, only Koufax (0.94) and Bob Gibson (1.89) have lower ERAs, albeit from lower-scoring eras, making Schilling’s accomplishments all the more impressive.
Turning back to the regular season, Schilling’s 3,116 strikeouts rank 15th all-time, and his 8.6 strikeout-per-nine rate ranks third among pitchers with at least 3,000 innings, behind only Johnson and Ryan, and just ahead of Roger Clemens (the order is the same in terms of strikeout percentage, with his 23.5% third). It’s true that Schilling pitched in an era when strikeout rates were almost continually on the rise, but he was still ahead of the curve: his trio of 300-K seasons puts him in the company of Johnson, Ryan, and Koufax as the only pitchers with more than two such seasons during the expansion era, and he finished in his league’s top five in strikeouts eight times. His K%+ — his league-normalized strikeout rate — of 139 (39% better than average) ranks 16th among pitchers with at least 2,500 innings. What’s more, he demonstrated impeccable control while doing so, leading the league in strikeout-to-walk ratio five times and placing in the top five another four times; his 4.4 ratio is the highest of any pitcher with at least 2,500 innings since 1893, when the pitching distance was first set at 60-feet, six-inches.
Schilling never won a Cy Young award, but he placed second three times during the 2001-04 span. Because he’s all over the leaderboard in key pitching categories, he scores very well by Bill James’ Hall of Fame Monitor metric, which gives credit for awards, league leads, postseason performance and so on; on a scale where 100 indicates “a good possibility” of making the Hall of Fame and 130 indicates “a virtual cinch,” his 171 points clear the bar by a mile.
Schilling’s ability to miss bats and prevent runs led to eight top five finishes in WAR, and nine seasons with at least 5.0 WAR; among his contemporaries, only Clemens (14), Johnson (11), Maddux (11), and Mussina (10) had more of the latter, while Martinez had as many. Schilling’s 79.5 career WAR ranks 26th all-time, about six wins above the standard for Hall of Fame starters. His peak score of 48.6 WAR is 1.4 wins below the standard — a couple runs per year, spread out over seven seasons. His overall JAWS, however, is 2.5 ahead of the standard, tied for 27th all-time, ahead of five 300-game winners (Glavine, Ryan, Mickey Welch, Don Sutton, and Early Wynn) as well as 35 other enshrined starters. That’s a Hall of Fame pitcher, as I have written in various versions of this profile since the 2013 ballot.
After debuting with 38.8% of the vote in 2013, Schilling lost and then regained around nine points over the next two cycles, mainly because the ballots were overcrowded and chockfull of starters who were easy first-ballot choices. With Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz, Johnson, and Martinez pitchers elected, and with the seal broken on sub-300 win pitchers from the 21st century, Schilling climbed to 52.3% in 2016. However, over the next two Hall of Fame election cycles, Schilling’s public persona, which may have already had an impact upon his support, began to overshadow his candidacy.
Schilling’s politics have been a significant part of that persona going back to when he stumped for George W. Bush on Good Morning America just hours after the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, an unpopular move in a state that voted heavily for Massachusetts senator John Kerry during that year’s presidential election. But to the point that he surpassed 50% — a significant threshold given that aside from current candidates, only Gil Hodges received that much support from the writers and never gained entry — his candidacy had withstood numerous controversies and efforts to alienate voters, including but not limited to:
- His longstanding public feuds with high-profile writers such as ESPN’s Pedro Gomez, Newsday’s Jon Heyman, and the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy.
- The demise of his video game company, 38 Studios, which received a $75 million loan from the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation to relocate from Massachusetts but went bankrupt and laid off its staff of 379 people without notice, violating federal law. The state of Rhode Island filed suit and recouped just $16.9 million in two partial settlements.
- A fall 2015 suspension from his job as an ESPN analyst for posting a Twitter meme that compared Muslim extremists to German Nazis.
- His January 2015 claim that his conservative political views were costing him votes.
That last claim was belied by back-to-back double-digit gains on the 2015 and ’16 ballots. Prior to the latter year, he told Boston radio station WEEI, “I’m not going to change who I am to make people think differently of me… If my mouth keeps me out of the Hall of Fame, then it’s a flawed process.” He made similar comments before the 2017 announcement, calling the voters “some of the worst human beings I’ve ever known… scumbags all across,” and adding, “I promise you if I had said ‘lynch Trump,’ I’d be getting in with about 90 percent.”
It would be the understatement of the century, at least in the realm of Hall of Fame voting, to say that Schilling has continually refused to temper his noxious and obnoxious views for the benefit of his candidacy. He continued to run afoul of ESPN until being fired in April 2016 for “unacceptable” conduct stemming from his posting of an offensive Facebook meme about transgender bathroom laws, and publicly commenting on the 2016 presidential election. While nobody loves the idea of an employer disciplining an employee over their public expression, employment in such a high-profile job doesn’t come without certain expectations and conditions. Schilling repeatedly chose to violate those conditions with offensive sentiments that obviously crossed the line and rankled ESPN viewers, as well as its higher-ups.
Schilling’s rhetoric has only grown more incendiary since his firing. On Twitter, days before the 2016 presidential election, he praised a photo showing a pro-Donald Trump t-shirt that advocated lynching; “So much awesome here,” he wrote regarding a shirt that read, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” While Schilling later claimed his comments were “sarcasm,” by that point, several BBWAA voters proclaimed that they were withdrawing their support of his candidacy at least for 2017, citing the same character clause that many voters use to justify not voting for players connected to PED use. Wrote former BBWAA president Susan Slusser, “I’ve voted for him previously. But seems to me like advocating murder goes against character clause.” Wrote another former BBWAA president, Jose de Jesus Ortiz, “[P]roposing lynching pretty much sinks his chance on my ballot on character clause.” Wrote Shaughnessy, “[Schilling] has transitioned from a mere nuisance to an actual menace to society.” Said Heyman in a radio interview, “There is a line there to me and he crossed that line by espousing lynching.”
They weren’t the only voters who shied from Schilling. According to Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, which collects the published votes of every voter willing to share (71.0% did in 2017, either before or after the election), he was dropped from the ballots of 35 voters who had supported him the previous year, and was the only one of 34 candidates to lose significant ground (7.3%) relative to 2016. In the 2018 cycle, even as he continued to polarize the electorate, he regained most of that lost support. Per the Tracker, 25 returning voters included him where they hadn’t the previous year, but another 11 dropped him; meanwhile, nine out of 13 newcomers included him as well, en route to a 51.2% share.
That happened even while Schilling continued to undermine his own candidacy. In May 2017, after Orioles outfielder Adam Jones revealed that he had been subjected to racist taunts at Fenway Park, Schilling accused Jones of lying, as though he himself had borne witness to the outfielder’s experience. This came even after CC Sabathia echoed Jones‘ story about receiving racist taunts at Fenway and said of the 62 Black players in the league, “We all know. When you go to Boston, expect it.” Even so, Schilling continued to double down on the topic to a discomforting degree.
In mid-December 2017, by the time many voters had sent off their ballots, Schilling did a podcast interview with Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist Congressional candidate from Wisconsin who was dropped as a contributor from Breitbart News — a far-right website the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a “white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill” — for a string of anti-Semitic messages. The podcast, which featured Schilling endorsing and promoting Nehlen’s campaign and describing himself as “a fan,” was taken down by Breitbart soon afterwards. Elsewhere in 2018, Schilling stayed busy by retweeting a conspiracy theory suggesting that one of the survivors of the Parkland massacre was a paid crisis actor, called climate change “a hoax,” and used his Facebook page to promote the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory.
Such views led the Red Sox to distance themselves from him. During the 2018 World Series, the team declined to invite Schilling to join ceremonial first pitch festivities that included 2004 teammates Martinez, Alan Embree, Keith Foulke, Kevin Millar, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, and Tim Wakefield. “We did not reach out to him, but it is not out of spite,” an unnamed Red Sox executive said. “It was originally just going to be Pedro and David and Wake and Millar, but we heard from a few others and they are included.” Schilling himself confirmed that he had not been invited, but said on Twitter, “No worries though.”
Schilling’s 2019 was comparatively quiet, aside from a brief flirtation with a potential run for Congress and an unsuccessful campaign to interview for the Phillies’ open managerial job. His 2020… well, a cursory search yields tweets of his downplaying the coronavirus, including one where he accuses “Demokkkrats” of “overreaction to Corona and attempted power grabs,” and another where he referred to “this ‘global killer’ scam that’s allowing people of ‘power’ to take away God given rights and just make shit up as they go.”
Setting aside his interjections into controversies involving pitcher Trevor Bauer and NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, there’s also news of Schilling sitting on the advisory board of We Build the Wall — a group raising money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — alongside Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top strategist and campaign manager and a noted alt-right figure. Bannon was one of four men arrested for embezzlement in connection with the group’s fundraising; Schilling wasn’t charged, but again, that’s gross company to keep. More recently, Schilling has devoted his attention to parroting Trump’s thoroughly discredited claims of election fraud, as well as at least one call for the President to declare martial law. Oh, and while amplifying a debunked claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci approved hydroxychloroquine as a cure for coronaviruses in 2005, he called Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “a war criminal,” compared him to “the pile of steaming shit uncovered at Nuremberg and exposed 9/1/46,” and fostered fears of forced vaccinations. At this point, his Twitter account, which has nearly 284,000 followers, could cover every square in a conspiracy-themed game of Blackout Bingo.
So, what’s a voter to do when it comes to a candidate with an increasingly corrosive public persona? My study of the history of the character clause for The Cooperstown Casebook leads me to conclude that it’s a mistake to connect Schilling’s words to the “integrity, sportsmanship, character” portion of the Hall’s voting instructions. His comments had no bearing on his playing career, and I don’t believe that the clause — which, for starters, was introduced by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who spent his 24-year tenure upholding the game’s color line — is worthy of increased investment by voters. What’s more, if there’s some definition of “integrity, sportsmanship and character” that can be applied in a positive manner to 2017 Today’s Game honoree Bud Selig — who as the Brewers owner colluded against free agents, and as commissioner turned a blind eye to the proliferation of PEDs — then the clause should be regarded as even flimsier and more meaningless than anyone has previously considered it. This isn’t the time to further imbue it with greater importance.
Having said that, I was not alone in believing that Schilling’s pro-lynching tweet went beyond the pale as far as public discourse is concerned, in that it moved from his personally held beliefs (however toxic) to a condonation of violence. His claim of “sarcasm” regarding the matter didn’t wash given his failure to apologize or repudiate the post. On the contrary, he’s buried that particular controversy under avalanches of hot garbage in the four years since, all without apology. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of it all, even in an exercise like this.
At a time when the type of right-wing rhetoric Schilling has repeatedly trafficked in has fueled the United States’ inclusion among the most dangerous countries for professional journalists, I don’t blame any journalist for eliminating Schilling from consideration. And at a time when Trump and 126 members of Congress have called for the unprecedented overturning of a fair presidential election on the grounds of unfounded claims of voter fraud, I’m not about to give the benefit of the doubt to a single person, let alone a Hall of Fame candidate with strong stats and an impressive highlight reel, amplifying those claims.
Thus, I’m done telling anybody to hold their nose and vote for Schilling, and while I have included him on nearly every one of my virtual ballots since he became eligible, I won’t be including him now that I have an actual ballot. Not this year, and — spoiler alert — not next year either, if he falls short of 75% this time around. At times, I’ve worried that figuring out how to handle his candidacy would be difficult once I got my ballot, but aside from the labor of tracking the above litany, he made my decision far easier than it would have been even a couple of months ago. This isn’t about politics, this is about his using his sizable platform to spread hatred, intolerance, and disinformation. That platform will only grow if and when he’s elected, and I want no part of that. Nope nope nope.
Based upon what I’ve outlined above, Schilling is as qualified for the Hall of Fame as any of this year’s candidates. Voters have cited my research and his JAWS standing in justifying their votes for him, particularly when that was hardly a majority view. As ever, they’re as free to ignore that conclusion as they are any of my conclusions about the baseball achievements of Bonds, Clemens, Scott Rolen, Todd Helton, and anybody else on the ballot.
Will he make it to 75%? As I noted in the wake of last year’s results, since the BBWAA returned to voting annually in 1966, 20 out of 21 candidates who received at least 70% and still had eligibility remaining were elected the following year, with Jim Bunning the exception (he was later elected by the Veterans Committee). Normally, voters close ranks around such candidates, but it’s pretty clear by now that this is not a normal candidacy. While the odds are high that Schilling will be elected eventually, the only certainty is that it won’t be with me checking the box next to his name.
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