(Headline USA) Major League Baseball star Curt Schilling said he has been intentionally left out of the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his conservative views and support for former President Donald Trump.
Schilling was in the MLB for 20 years and played as a pitcher for the Phillies, Red Sox, and Diamondbacks. He helped lead the Philadelphia Phillies to the World Series in 1993, and won championships in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks and in 2004 and 2007 with the Boston Red Sox.
But the Baseball Writers’ Association of America still refuses to recognize him as one of the greatest pitchers because he is a conservative, Schilling alleged.
“[The BBWAA] said it. They’ve come out and said it. What’s happening in this country, if you think back, in many ways, I think I was the domino that started it all in the cancel culture when I got fired from ESPN,” he told Fox News, referring to how he was let go from ESPN in 2015 after posting a tweet that compared Islamic extremists to Nazis.
Schilling joked: “[I’m] still trying to figure out what group I offended that votes, the terrorists or the Nazis, but no one has been able to tell me since,” he said. “I’m not happy about it, but it is what it is.”
This was the last year Schilling’s name could appear on the BBWAA’s ballot. He won 58.6% of the votes.
However, there is still a chance he could be elected to the Hall of Fame when veterans committees vote in December for 2023 inductions.
Schilling has blasted the BBWAA many times over the past few years for holding his political views against him.
“As I’ve stated often over the past years to those I’ve spoken with, in my heart I am at peace,” he said last year. “Nothing, zero, none of the claims being made by any of the writers hold merit.
“In my 22 years playing professional baseball in the most culturally diverse locker rooms in sports I’ve never said or acted in any capacity other than being a good teammate,” he said.
