Written by Nick Carraway

My alter ego has published four books about baseball. The last two have been about the baseball Hall of Fame. So, imagine my surprise when my two biggest passions collided this week when Curt Schilling failed to get into the Hall of Fame. He is taking his ball and going home.

Schilling’s case for the Hall of Fame is a challenging one. He won more than 200 games and had more than 3000 strikeouts with the Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox. He also dominated in the bright lights of the playoffs.Unfortunately, he also has made a ton of news off the field primarily by being a conservative you know what.

Dozens of voters asked to be able to rescind their yes vote this year when Schilling spoke out in favor of the attack on the capitol. This brings us to an impossibly hard scenario. Proponents of Schlling correctly point out that the Hall of Fame has unrepentant racists, wife beaters, and drug users. It even has one accused of murder and one convicted of drug trafficking charges.

Yet, all of those players were selected years ago when morals and sensibilities were different. Can the current voters really be held to the standard of voters up to 80 years ago? The Hall of Fame has a character clause, but it isn’t clear whether they mean anything that happens this far off the field. Voters that pulled the lever for him knew what he was before the attack on the capitol. His support shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Schilling is taking his ball and going home. He doesn’t want to give the writers the satisfaction of saying no again. He wants the Veterans Committee to decide his fate. My guess is he gets in eventually when all of this dies down. The playing credentials definitely warrant it, but some opinions are just too toxic to overlook.

Nick