Baseball Hall of Fame: Making the case for Curt Schilling — and other thoughts from a voter | Scott Lauber

In each of the last two years, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America put a former Phillies player in the Hall of Fame. Jim Thome gained entry in 2018; the late Roy Halladay followed in 2019.

The streak really should’ve continued with Curt Schilling.

Never mind that Big Schill was the best postseason pitcher of his generation, having hurled three organizations to the World Series and won a championship with two. When the election results were announced Tuesday night, he fell 20 votes short of the 75% threshold required for admission to Cooperstown, N.Y.

Schilling’s name was tagged on 278 of the 397 ballots that were cast, a 70% approval that sets him up well to be selected next year, the second-to-last time that he will be eligible for election by the writers.

It’s difficult, though, not to wonder if he would already have been in the Hall of Fame if only he would delete his Twitter account.

Full disclosure: Schilling got my vote, as he has every year since I became part of the electorate in 2015. I also scratched out checkmarks — yes, it actually is a paper ballot that gets placed in the mail — next to the following names: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Scott Rolen, Gary Sheffield, Billy Wagner, and Larry Walker.

Jeter, the iconic Yankees shortstop, came within one vote of being the second unanimous selection ever. Walker, a slugging outfielder for three teams in 17 seasons, was elected by a six-vote margin in his 10th and final year on the ballot.

But Schilling’s candidacy is of particular interest around here. For one thing, although he’s associated mostly with leading the fledgling Diamondbacks to a World Series title in 2001 and pitching on a sutured right ankle that bled through his sock during the Red Sox’s curse-reversing run in 2004, he forged his big-game reputation nearly a decade earlier with the 1993 Phillies.

Remember his 147-pitch, five-hit shutout of the Blue Jays in Game 5 of the ’93 World Series? It ranks with the best games ever pitched in franchise history.

There are baseball-related arguments to be made against Schilling, none of which hold up with this voter. Hard-line traditionalists dwell on his 216 wins, tied for only 86th on the all-time list, but seem to conveniently ignore his 11-2 record and 2.23 ERA in 19 career postseason starts. And while detractors note that Schilling never won a Cy Young Award, it’s worth pointing out that he was a three-time runner-up, including twice to Arizona co-ace Randy Johnson.

But most elections are about politics, and in Schilling's case, this one is no different.

Since retiring from baseball, he has shared memes on social media that compared Muslims to Nazis and promoted commentary about transgender rights, tweeted his endorsement of violence against journalists, and gained attention for his far-right political leanings. ESPN fired Schilling over his abhorrent tweets, and many Hall of Fame voters have cited the vague "character clause" as the reason not to send him to Cooperstown.

The view here is that Schilling’s opinions, as toxic and objectionable as they are, have little to do with his 20-year big-league career. It is, after all, the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Morality.

Far more relevant is the regard in which his on-field ability was held by many of his peers.

“He was fearless. I mean, fearless,” former Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville said last year. “He wanted the ball. He wanted to go deep in the game. He wanted to take on the best players. He loved the bragging rights. And he loved competing. He was always fighting for the team’s life every day. He loved for it to be on his shoulders.”

Said former Phillies pitcher and longtime broadcaster Larry Andersen: "You talk about a guy that comes in and pitches big games, and he was right there. He was the guy you wanted on the mound."

And from former Phillies second baseman Mickey Morandini: "We were completely confident in him."

That was good enough for me to keep Schilling on the ballot along with five holdovers from previous years and two newcomers. A rundown of choices:

Bonds and Clemens: It’s impossible to separate with certitude the dirty players from the clean ones during the pre-drug-testing era, which leaves us only to judge everyone on his merits. Good luck finding a hitter or a pitcher who dominated the game like these two. They rose to 60.7% and 61%, respectively, this year, and with two years left on the ballot, they will continue to get my vote. Manny Ramirez, suspended for flunking two drug tests after 2003, won’t.

Jeter: World Series championships and more hits than any other player in Yankees history. Enough said, at least for all but one voter.

Rolen: You probably know about his eight Gold Gloves, but quick, name all the third basemen who had eight consecutive seasons with at least an .840 OPS in 400 plate appearances. Yep, Rolen. That’s the list. He made an impressive jump from 17.2% last year to 35.3% this year, but still has a long way to go.

Sheffield: I held out until now. But there are only 11 players with at least 500 homers, a .500 slugging percentage and .390 on-base percentage, and Sheffield is one of them. He’s finally at 30.55 after five years in the teens.

Wagner: Some voters don’t think he pitched enough innings (903). Others are biased against closers. I’m bowled over by a 2.31 ERA, 0.998 WHIP, 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings and 422 saves, sixth-most in history. He rose from 16.7% to 31.7%.

Walker: With a .400 career on-base percentage, a .965 OPS, a 141 adjusted-OPS, 383 homers and 230 steals, he had the credentials to have gotten in a while ago. Better late than never, though.

Schilling might sing that tune soon enough. Maybe he should take a year-long Twitter break.