Could Schilling Talk His Way Off Ballot?

From the moment Curt Schilling appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot, his candidacy screamed “border line.

- Jerry Crasnick

Supporters pointed to his dazzling strike out to-walk ratio and his postseason brilliance. Detractors cited his middling 216-win total and the absence of a Cy Young Award on his resume. Everybody settled in for the long haul with the expectation that his place in history would become clear over time.

Few Hall watchers could have ever envisioned the acrimony surrounding Schilling rising to this level. Five years into his candidacy, Schilling has veered down a side road where career Wins Above Replacement totals and bloody sock October heroics are mere afterthoughts. Hard as this is to believe, he might have surpassed both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens as a polarizing figure in the Hall of Fame discussion.

The furor around Schilling has also given rise to a new and wholly unforeseen question: Is it possible to tweet your way out of Cooperstown?

Schilling hasn’t thrown a pitch since 2007, but he remains in the public eye through social media and his Breitbart radio show, where he’s happy to espouse his right-wing views on climate change, the Second Amendment, Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the National Anthem, Canada’s health care system and Hillary Clinton’s emails, among other hot-button topics.

He also made news during the height of the presidential election in early November, when he posted a tweet in response to a man wearing a t-shirt with the inscription, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Assembly Required.” Schilling expressed his approval, calling the shirt “awesome,” before the comment disappeared from his Twitter timeline.

Schilling has since referred to the tweet as “100 percent sarcasm,” but a lot of voters failed to see the humor. Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, a consistent Schilling supporter in the past, plans to put the pitcher in timeout for 2017.