Curt Schilling captured headlines recently when he signaled that he would likely run against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for her Senate seat in 2018.
“I’ve made my decision: I’m going to run,” the former baseball star said. “But I haven’t talked to Shonda, my wife. And ultimately it’s going to come down to how her and I feel this would affect our marriage and our kids.”
In a Thursday interview on Fox and Friends, Schilling railed against Warren and Hillary Clinton as “the core of everything that’s wrong with this government.”
“They’re both incredibly supportive tax-and-spend liberals,” Schilling said, per The Hill. “We’re $20 trillion in debt. Tax-and-spend doesn’t work. It’s been proven not to work.”
A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll shows that Schilling would lose to Warren in a landslide, 58 percent to 24 percent.
Here are five things you need to know about Schilling.
1. Schilling had a Hall of Fame career as a pitcher. Schilling was originally drafted by the Red Sox, but made his major-league debut with the Baltimore Orioles. He was subsequently traded to the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies, and it was on the latter team he transitioned from being mainly a reliever to a starting pitcher. He was with the Phillies until 2000, when he was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks and formed one of baseball’s most fearsome 1-2 punches between him and lanky lefty Randy Johnson. The tandem helped the Diamondbacks win the World Series in 2001. Schilling signed with the Boston Rod Sox as a free agent in 2003 and was a key cog in the team winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007.
Schilling’s numbers are Hall of Fame-worthy, according to CBS Sports:
Schilling went 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA (127 OPS+) and a 1.14 WHIP in his 20-year career. He also saved 22 games during an early-career stint in the bullpen. Schilling was selected to six All-Star Games, and while he never did win a Cy Young, he did finished second in the voting three times (2001, 2002, 2004).
On two occasions each Schilling led the league in wins (2001, 2004), innings (1998, 2001), batters faced (1998, 2001), strikeouts (1997, 1998), WHIP (1992, 2002) and walk rate (2002, 2006). During his peak from 1996-2004, he went 141-81 with a 3.23 ERA (141 ERA+) and 1.08 WHIP during one of the most offense-happy eras in history.
Schilling retired with 80.7 WAR, which ranks 26th all-time among pitchers, just behind Hall of Famer Bob Gibson (81.9) and a bit ahead of Hall of Famer Tom Glavine (74.0). Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system says Schilling exceeds the established Hall of Fame standard for starting pitchers based on overall value, though he falls just short on peak value.
Schilling’s Hall of Fame credentials also include his spot-on command, which was a “career 4.38 K/BB ratio is the second best all-time among pitchers with 1,000 career innings, trailing only Tommy Bond (5.04), who pitched from 1874-84,” according to CBS Sports.
But it’s his postseason numbers that truly show that Schilling is deserving to be in the Hall of Fame:
Schilling’s teams went 14-5 in his 19 postseason starts. He allowed one or fewer earned run 12 times, including in six starts in a row at one point. Schilling was given the ball in Game 1 in six of his 11 postseason series, and in four starts with his team facing elimination, he allowed six runs on 22 hits and one walk in 30 1/3 innings. He struck out 27. His team won all four games.
Among those four starts is the famed “bloody sock” game, Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS. Schilling had been battling an ankle injury for some time, and prior to that game, he had a damaged tendon sewn back together so he could pitch. He held the Yankees to one run in seven innings to force a decisive Game 7.
Schilling is fifth all-time in postseason wins (11), eighth in strikeouts (120), ninth in innings (133 1/3) and ninth in starts (19). His 56 strikeouts in 2001 are a single-postseason record and his 48 1/3 innings in 2001 were the record until Madison Bumgarner threw 52 2/3 innings in the 2014 postseason. Without question, Schilling is one of the greatest postseason pitchers ever.
However, Schilling has yet to reach the Hall of Fame, and he claims it’s due to his status as an outspoken Republican.
2. Schilling has a history of making headlines with his political stances. These include, via USA Today Sports:
- Endorsing George W. Bush in 2004 shortly after winning the World Series with the Red Sox.
- Going on a Twitter rant against evolution.
- Saying the blood moon shows that the Iran Deal would be terrible.
- Saying that Hillary Clinton “gave classified information on hundreds if not thousands of emails on a public server…after what happened to General Petraeus, she should buried under a jail somewhere.”
But it was the following comments that put Schilling in hot water at ESPN…
3. Schilling was fired from ESPN for having the temerity to voice a point of view that didn’t fit their leftist narrative. ESPN first suspended Schilling for re-tweeting a photo that stated: “It’s said only 5%-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?” The network eventually fired Schilling for writing a Facebook post that read, “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”
Schilling’s post also a featured this graphic.
And thus, ESPN fired him.
“Schilling made the horrible mistake of speaking truth in a place where only leftist falsehood is tolerated – which is why I call ESPN MSNBC with spherical objects,” Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro wrote.
4. Schilling asked CNN’s Jake Tapper why Jews vote Democrat. Here was how the exchange went, according to Politico:
“I would like to ask you something as a person who is practicing the Jewish faith and have since you were young, I don’t understand, maybe this is the amateur, non-politician in me, I don’t understand how people of Jewish faith can back the Democratic Party, which over the last 50 years have been so clearly anti Israel, so clearly anti-Jewish Israel that I don’t know what else need to be done, said or happen — the Democratic Party is aligned with Israel only because we have agreements in place that make them have to be ” Schilling said.
Tapper did not hesitate in responding to the former Red Sox pitcher and World Series champion who is considering a challenge to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2018.
“Well, I don’t speak for Jews and I don’t support the Democratic or Republican Party,” Tapper told Schilling. “I would imagine, just to try to answer your question, one of the reasons many Jews are Democrats has more to do for social welfare programs and that sort of thing than it does for Israel.”
Leftists immediately pounced on Schilling’s question as some sort of reflection of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Jack Moline, a Democratic activist, denounced Schilling’s question as “tone-deaf remarks about Jewish American.” Schilling called leftists who smeared him as anti-Semitic “clowns.”
As for his question, Schilling should watch Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro’s video on why Jews vote Democrat:
5. Schilling will host an online radio show through Breitbart. New York Magazine reported that the show will give Schilling a platform to voice his political thoughts and will eventually feature a video feed of the program. Schilling has been an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, so he’ll fit right in at Breitbart.
