The Price of FAME

Curt Schilling

MLB Service: 20 years (1988-2007)

Wins: 216

Losses: 146

Earned Run Average: 3.46

Strike Outs: 3116



When I was twelve years old I watched most of the games in the World Series in my living room with my mother, and we watched the gem of the 1993 Series, Curt Schilling's five-hit shutout that beat Juan Guzman and the Toronto Blue Jays. When the game ended, my mother asked me why I had such a sour look on my face.
"What the hell is your problem? You like the Phillies right? Almost as much as you like the Yankees..."
I shook my head and looked at her with the corners of my mouth folded and creased.
"Yeah, yeah I like 'em. I just wish it wasn't Schilling who just did that though. I can't stand that guy!"

It was pretty consistent throughout his career. Even before he had decided to open his mouth to try to become famous, he was just that guy you knew you wouldn't like if he ever did. It made you sad because he was pretty good. I was sad because the Phillies were an upstart team who needed a dominant starting pitcher after they traded him in 2000, but I still didn't like him enough to actually miss him.

Then he got better (after three down years in the late-nineties he nearly doubled all of his totals and did double his win total...but no, he's never taken steroids), and started to pitch well in the post-season, destroying the Yankees on two famous occasions. All of a sudden, he was a republican Bostonian, connected with Kennedy town if only in their hatred for the New York nine. By then everyone who didn't root for the Red Sox hated him. They listened to sound bytes from his radio show just to find reasons to hate him more. In the end, he was spewing enough racist, xenophobic propaganda over the airwaves to equally combat every loud, selfish and disruptive minority professional athlete out there. He tried his best to champion every cause he believed in, and after all of the mutual hatred between him and his many haters, after painting a sock to make it appear to be bloody, after someone hated him so much that they asked Ben Davis to lay down a bunt in the seventh inning of a perfect game he was pitching, he got his points across and that seems to be all that satisfies and completes a man in America.





Well, a man like Curt Schilling. People who think NASCAR is a sport and wear fanny packs and yell on television to America (on "Good Morning America") to "Vote, and vote Bush" the morning after winning the 2004 World Series.





Someone listened to you Curt, and like always, you were wrong for opening your mouth. You are wrong for your jealous rages directed at Alex Rodriguez. You were wrong for telling him outright that you'd throw him only fastballs in the 2002 All-Star Game. Did you feel like a big man when you called the guy out for no reason and then struck him out in the All-Star Game? How did it feel when the Red Sox were experimenting with you as a closer and you came in to save that game on July 14, 2005 against Alex Rodriguez and he bounced that little dead duck you threw at him off of that hideous triangle in center field of Fenway in a game that counted? I saw your face when you heard that sound. Did you hear how everyone gasped when it BANGED off the wall? Did you see how long Rodriguez looked at you after he hit it? Oh my brothers, it was real horrowshow...

That's how everyone should remember Curt Schilling: as the jerk who is a winner and could be remembered as a winner if he'd have just been a good guy, which deep down, he never even had in him. He just wanted to be famous, and he realized early in this decade that the fame aspect of the Hall of Fame might be important if a player's numbers won't ever make the grade. So he opened his mouth and for nine years nothing but hatred came out, and for it, others hated him. And he's famous, so some baseball writer without a brain and access to statistics on the Internet may vote him into the Hall of Fame.

Please keep good baseball players out of the Hall of Fame with great ones...

Please