Marty Walsh hopes Curt Schilling gets into the Hall of Fame, despite his tweets
"Some of those Yankees teams said some crazy things, and some of those folks are in the Hall of Fame."
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh says he hopes Curt Schilling gets elected—just not to the U.S. Senate.
According to a State House News Service report Monday, Walsh doesn’t think Schilling’s outspoken political views, and sometimes inflammatory social media posts, will or should keep the former Red Sox pitcher out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I doubt baseball writers are worried about political feelings of different people. I mean you heard some of the folks in the Hall of Fame have colorful pasts and have said some crazy things on and off the field,” the mayor told reporters Friday. “Back in the heyday of the baseball – in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s – some of those Yankees teams said some crazy things, and some of those folks are in the Hall of Fame.”
Walsh—a Red Sox fan who also reportedly said he’d like to see former pitcher Roger Clemens voted into Cooperstown—added that Schilling was a “premier pitcher.”
“In his time one of the most dominating pitchers out there, and a former Red Sox,” he said. “So I’d certainly love to see him in the Hall of Fame.”
Schilling, for his part, has his doubts. Last week, he told TMZ his vocal political views are swaying Hall of Fame voters against him.
“They’re not hiding the fact that they’ve stopped voting for me because of the things I’ve said on social media. That’s their prerogative as voters,” he said.
Indeed, some baseball writers, including Dan Shaughnessy and Jon Heyman, said they were unlikely to vote for Schilling, particularly after he tweeted that a shirt advocating the killing of journalists was “awesome.” They cited the same “character clause” (included in Rule 5 here) that some use to justify not voting for players suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs.
“I promise you, if I had said, ‘Lynch Trump,’ I’d be getting in with about 90 percent of the vote this year,” Schilling told TMZ.
Schilling has most recently been hovering just above 50 percent of the disclosed votes (well short of the 75 percent threshold to make it) in 2017, his fifth year of the ballot. If that number holds, it would be a lesser percentage than he received last year, before his social media activity began to catch up to him.
Schilling has also ruminated (to the skepticism of some) about running for U.S. Senate in 2018 against Elizabeth Warren, who recently announced she’ll run for a second term.
And while Walsh says he’d like to see Schilling in Cooperstown, he’d rather Warren continue to represent Massachusetts in Washington, D.C.
“I think now we need Senator Warren in the Senate more than ever,” he said Friday.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com