Curt Schilling blasts BBWAA after they “created a caricature” of him for Hall of Fame voting

Former Boston Red Sox, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Curt Schilling fell off of the BBWAA’s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot when he fell well short of the 75 percent required for induction. He garnered just 58.6 percent of the vote after receiving 71.1 percent of the vote in 2021.

In his first interview after the results were announced on Tuesday, Schilling was a guest on the new FOX News show “One Nation” with host Brian Kilmeade. The premier episode of the new weekend program debuted on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Schilling was on and was asked about the situation.

Curt Schilling is never one to mince words about why he believes he’s not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Curt Schilling said that, after last year, he did not want to be on the BBWAA ballot but he was and dropped more than 12 percent in the vote. However, he claimed that part of the reason why he wanted his name off the ballot was that the Hall of Fame season became a “very unhappy” time for him.

“This period of time (in the year) became very unhappy [for me and my family] because the media created a caricature and a character [of me] that actually doesn’t actually exist,” said Schilling. “The guy that the media members of the Hall of Fame voting committee (the BBWAA) didn’t vote for is not a real person and they’ve been able to do that unchecked.”

Kilmeade asked Schilling “Do you believe your support of conservative causes and (former President) Donald Trump plays a role in you not being in?” Schilling wholeheartedly said he believes so.

“Oh, absolutely,” said a laughing Schilling. “They (the BBWAA voters) have said it … I had the audacity to compare terrorists to Nazis. Muslim extremists to Nazis. And 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.”

He also thinks that he was a trailblazer in a sense because he believes that he was the first domino in the “cancel culture” against people who have conservative beliefs.

“What’s happening in this country … really, I think I was, in many ways, the domino that started it all with the cancel culture when I got fired from ESPN,” said Schilling. Schilling was reportedly fired from ESPN in April 2016 when he posted comments on Facebook that were anti-transgender. He had been an analyst on Sunday Night Baseball from 2014 through 2015 and had been an analyst for ESPN since 2010.

Schilling said that former President Trump, who Schilling said that he has known for “almost 20 years,” reached out to him after he heard that Schilling did not get into the Hall of Fame.

Schilling will be up for consideration on the “Today’s Game Era Committee” along with other players that fell off of this year’s ballot, including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.