Baseball
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
Lest we forget:
Marge Schott – Society for American Baseball Research ~
Edit: Rose was banished from baseball for gambling in 1989. By then Schott had won a reputation as a cheapskate. She turned off lights in the team’s offices and wanted to fire all the scouts because, she said, “all they did was watch ball games.” … she would kick the elevator door outside her office until the operator came.
full article:
1Search domain sabr.org/bioproj/person/marge-schott/https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/marge-schott/
Sorry, should be: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/marge-schott/
2As a Red Sox fan, I’m torn about this. Schilling was the hero of the hour after the bloody sock game back in 2004, when we finally broke the Curse of the Bambino and won the Series. But damn, what a toxic human being. I’m glad it’s not my decision to make.
3I’m glad I don’t have a vote for the HOF. The keepers of all the temples are not having an easy time of it lately.
Take, for example, what do about official portraits of the Orange Moron and Melanoma. Since he didn’t see fit to welcome the Obamas for the official unveiling of their White House portraits, I rather expect he will get the same treatment. Besides, their portraits could hang in the butler’s pantry and who would know? Besides the butler, that is.
The National Portrait Gallery is a different matter, though. I remember visiting the Hall of Presidents shortly after Nixon resigned. The NPG had acquired the Norman Rockwell portrait that was done a few years earlier. It was hung in a niche in the very back of the room with a velvet rope thingy in front of it. Obviously, they were concerned about vandalism. The Hall has been redesigned in recent years and the Nixon portrait just hangs with all the others. If the Senate convicts T****, that would probably let the Gallery off the hook. (Yeah, I know)
The Baseball HOF is off the hook, as long as the votes are not there for the cheaters and nut cases. Civilians like us can debate the issue to our hearts’ content. I can’t help but wonder, though, if the issue of Bonds, Clemons, et al., haven’t been the impetus for MLB and HOF to incorporate the Negro Leagues into the center of attention, like they should have done decades ago. Our collective sense of character and morality have changed over the time the HOF was first created and as long as “character” is part of the equation for entry, this won’t change.
Like I said, I’m glad this is all above my pay grade.
4Maybe baseball “heroes” will learn that words matter. Maybe they don’t want to be role models but they chose that path. It’s one thing to state political ties and beliefs, but hateful, racist rants should be disqualifying when it comes to the hall of fame. Hard to go back and change those that probably would not make it in today, but voting in someone like Schilling would be wrong today. I for one am glad he’s out of the running.
5Maybe the ability to hit a ball with a bat, or catch the ball, shouldn’t qualify for Hero status?
We’re weird, we humans.
6I’m a lifelong (plus 70) baseball fan and actually cheered for Shilling but only when the Red Sox finally won the world series.
7My favorite picture of him now is of him standing on a corner in Boston to announce for some political office and only about four people showed up.
The character clause has to be used EVERY year for EVERY possible inductee. Although there are some in the HOF who probably shouldn’t be there due to character flaws, they should not be removed. That might be like firing a recovering alcoholic who has been dry for 20 years but you just found out about the long-ago drinking problem.
A school district in Texas where I used to be a member had a policy that covered anyone in grades 6-12 who participated in any extra-curricular activity or anything for which one was elected, like class favorite, homecoming queen, etc. There were certain categories of offenses that applied (shoplifting, fighting, dui, minor in possession, and some more) and the results were suspension from participation for three weeks, then more for a second offense; conference with parents, etc. This is the Cliff Notes summary and 20 year old recollection. What I do remember is one parent at a board meeting asking ” How can the school have any say or authority on something that happens off campus or in the summer?” (One of our premises was that it was a privilege, not a right to play,sing,dance on a team or be chosen favorite whatever.) A board member just said “There’s no time limit on being good.”
Seven to nothing vote in favor and we didn’t have any more objections.
I never followed any sports, but Curt Schilling popped up on my radar when he got a $75M load guarantee from Rhode Island, so he could develop a computer game. He may know baseball but knew diddly about computer games. The company went bankrupt, stiffing many employees of their pay. They were notified by email, months after the company knew it would be unable to launch the game promised to investors. Of course the executives and managers knew and were able to bail out, but many of the low-level coders were hung out to dry.
And Schilling was constantly shilling for the Republican Party. When the Obama admin backed solar power, he was one of the hypocrites shouting that the government should not be picking winners, the free market would work best without that kind of intervention, etc.
So maybe he can play baseball well, and if that’s all the HOF looks for, let them. But it does not raise my opinion of him in the least.
8The writers don’t give a crap about his politics – fact is he wasn’t that good.
9He was clutch in the post-season, but just over 200 wins over 20 years isn’t HOF caliber.
With all due respect Robert, that just isn’t true. When you get 71 percent of the vote the writers think your credentials are fine. I could go into more indepth and have in my books, but Schilling is more than qualified as a player.
10heard NPR’s discussion of the HoF — Mike Pesca makes his points pretty clearly.
https://www.tpr.org/2021-01-28/mlb-hall-of-fame-inducts-no-new-members-in-2021
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