Curt Schilling received nowhere near the 75 percent of votes required to be elected to the Hall of Fame and the former pitcher has an idea why. Schilling pitched 20 seasons in the big leagues, starting with the Baltimore Orioles in 1988 and concluding with the Boston Red Sox in 2007. He also made stops in Arizona, Philadelphia and Arizona during a career in which he won 216 ballgames and posted a 3.46 ERA. The numbers are not mind-boggling but they certainly warrant consideration for the MLB Hall of Fame. While Schilling might ultimately get the call, he came up well short in 2015, securing only 39.2 percent of the votes.
Why wasn’t he elected? As many debate his statistics and other achievements, Schilling has his own theory: He’s a Republican. He offered the following comments on WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan show this week:
I think he [John Smoltz] got them [the votes] because of [Greg] Maddox and [Tom] Glavine. The fact that they won 14 straight pennants I think… his Swiss Army knife versatility… I think he got a lot of accolades for that, I think he got a lot of recognition for that and he’s a Hall of Famer so — and I think the other big thing is, I think he’s a Democrat, and so… I know that as a Republican that there’s some people that really don’t like that.
It’s unclear how much weight Schilling is putting in the political basket but it’s obviously on his mind as a reasonable cause for not getting in. Maybe he’ll become a member of the Whig Party in 2015 to see if he gets more love in 2016.
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