Baseball writers who refuse to vote for pitcher Curt Schilling for the Hall of Fame are furthering the awful trend of enmeshing sports with national politics.

Schilling frequently expresses right-wing political views — not typical conservative views, but extreme views — that many people, myself included, consider noxious. But the “character” and “integrity” criteria for elevation to the Hall have more to do with the character and integrity of how players conducted themselves within baseball than with some catchall standard of decency. Otherwise, plenty of major cocaine users, grifters, and carousers who are in the Hall wouldn’t be there.