Once again, liberals in the Baseball Writers Association of America snubbed Curt Schilling despite a career worthy of a spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Don’t get too down about it, though.
Appearing on his eighth ballot, the outspoken conservative received votes from 70% of the voters, once again falling short of the 75% threshold needed to be inducted.
Left-wing bias is largely to blame for Schilling not being in the Hall of Fame — and some so-called character clause that was never applied to a bunch of other Hall of Fame inductees. Last year, Mike Mussina got inducted, and Schilling didn’t despite their highly similar career numbers, indicating the bias.
One could argue Schilling had a better career than Mussina, and they’d probably be right. Schilling had a lower career ERA and 300 more strikeouts. Plus, Schilling was a six-time All-Star and two-time MLB wins leader, while Mussina was a five-time All-Star and one-time MLB wins leader. Schilling also won the World Series three times and was World Series MVP in 2001 — Mussina never accomplished any of that.
The bright side of it all is one day none of this is going to matter, because one day Schilling will be a Hall of Famer.
It’s just a shame a handful of BBWAA members are trying to stop it from happening because of things he said or did after his career ended.
Mathematically speaking, it would be unprecedented for Schilling to not be inducted into the Hall of Fame at this point. No player has ever received 70% of the vote on one of their first 10 ballots and not been voted in. The only players to ever receive more than 60% of the vote and not get voted in by the BBWAA were Gil Hodges and Jack Morris (a veteran’s committee later voted Morris in).
The difference there? Those two were on the ballot for 15 years. They also never reached the same level of support as Schilling.
Next year’s ballot should help Schilling. Like this year’s, it will be relatively weak. Derek Jeter and Larry Walker inducted this year, so they won’t be on the ballot, and there isn’t a clear first-ballot Hall-of-Famer replacing either of them on the ballot. The top newcomers to the ballot will be Tim Hudson, Mark Buehrle, and Torii Hunter — great players, but not exactly the same caliber of talent.
That said, the voters will have more room on their ballots, and they’ll have to fill it with some names. For some, maybe that additional name will be Curt Schilling. After all, support for Schilling grew by 9.1 percentage points from 2019 to 2020 after four players got voted in (Mariano Rivera, Edgar Martinez, Roy Halladay, and Mike Mussina) and Fred McGriff got dropped from the ballot.
When Schilling is voted in, it will be well-deserved. It’s just an embarrassment to the voting process that it will take years longer than it should have.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
