Curt Schilling’s Rhetoric Should Outweigh his Baseball Accomplishments
Opinion: Curt Schilling was one of the best pitchers of his era. He also has a habit of saying bigoted and dangerous things. It’s probably best not to give him a Hall of Fame megaphone.
We’re two weeks away from the Baseball Hall of Fame announcing the Class of 2021, and Curt Schilling is wooing on-the-fence voters by… tweeting his support for insurrectionists. It’s par for the course with Schilling.
The former pitcher has spent a good chunk of his post-baseball life by acting like the spawn of the uncle you avoid at Thanksgiving and Laura Ingraham. He’s made ignorant, hateful comments and posts about Muslims, the transgender community and journalists, among others. Just last week, Schilling egged on the Trump-incited Capitol attack while also spreading conspiracy theories related to the events of Jan. 6.
Schilling’s dangerous rhetoric never hindered his performance during his 20-year-career, but it has been a key detriment when debating his Hall of Fame candidacy. Schilling, now in his ninth and second-to-last year on the ballot, received 70 percent of the vote share in 2019. At the time of this article’s publication, he has 74.6 percent of this year’s vote with 33.3 percent of the ballots revealed, per vote tracker Ryan Thibodaux. Candidates require 75 percent for induction.
The new class will be announced on Jan. 26, and ballots are being revealed by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America as the date draws near. Many of those journalists will explain their ballots – either on Twitter and/or for their employer – and thus justify why they did or didn’t vote for Schilling, a World Series MVP and three-time champ. Just about everyone will condemn Schilling’s comments and actions. Those that vote for him, however, will argue that his beliefs, egregious as they may be, should have no bearing on his Hall of Fame credentials. Some will note the irony of a journalist penalizing someone for exercising their right to free speech. The mention of other awful people being in Cooperstown is another common defense. There’s also the notion that the Hall of Fame is a museum, and a historically accurate museum should include even the game’s worst individuals, whether that be the prejudiced, cheaters and/or alleged abusers (this year’s ballot is especially littered with all kinds of malefactors, but we’ll keep the focus mostly on Schilling, the closest to 75 percent).
Ideally, the Hall of Fame would indeed be a museum, inclusive of the sport’s least inclusive participants while portraying their contributions to and reductions from the game in an honest manner. The issue is that the candidates — and many fans — don’t see induction as a mere acknowledgment of one’s place in history. To them, there is no higher honor in baseball than enshrinement, and the induction ceremony furthers that line of thinking by giving the inductees a literal platform from which to speak.
The concern is that someone like Schilling, known for incendiary speech, or Omar Vizquel, whose alleged domestic abuse was recently detailed by The Athletic, could exploit that platform and the added attention that comes with it. Vizquel’s representative, for example, already highlighted the ex-shortstop’s Hall of Fame candidacy when defending against the allegations, as if that had anything to do with the story.
In the case of Schilling, years of prior evidence make it easy to imagine his Hall of Fame speech or multiple press events taking sudden, troublesome turns – with scores of people listening and watching. Whether such potential words inspire or offend is beside the point; they would cause harm either way, and that’s something the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics clearly advises against. That, far more than the Hall of Fame’s vague character clause, should guide voters when filling out their ballots when one of the candidates openly expresses their support for violent coups, among other reprehensible beliefs. Schilling’s First Amendment rights protect his ability to espouse those beliefs. They do not require that he be given a microphone to speak into.
Not every voter feels that these factors outweigh Schilling’s baseball accomplishments, hence him nearing that 75-percent threshold thus far. And that includes some of the best journalists and people I know in the business. I understand the desire to stick to or at least prioritize baseball merit when voting for *checks notes…* the Baseball Hall of Fame. I’m just thinking beyond the Hall’s Plaque Gallery in disagreement.
Until there is some remedy created to address the split in thinking between voters who want a museum and candidates who see a crowning achievement, I would argue not providing baseball’s worst people with a platform to exploit is more important than awarding them for playing a game well.
Gary Phillips is a reporter, writer and editor for hire. He has written for The Athletic, Sporting News, USA Today Sports, Bleacher Report and Yankees Magazine, among others. He can be reached at garyhphillips@outlook.com.