It’s not normally my practice to call somebody out for something they have written. We are all entitled to our opinions, and even if you don’t agree with what someone has to say, it doesn’t make that point of view any less valid. My theory on these things is to live and let live, if you don’t like a certain author, don’t read them.
That’s basically been my course of action with Curt Schilling. I can’t stand him, and I avoid what he has to say. His opinions don’t become more valid because he happens to play baseball. Every now and then he will say something so outlandish that it lands in the national spotlight, and I become forced to confront him at these junctures. That’s why we are here now.
Let’s get a few things straight. I hold Schilling, the player, at a level of esteem that is reserved for guys like Larry Bird and Muhammad Ali. Not necessarily due to his level of talent, but because of his warrior mentality that he enters each and every competition with. The guy never mails in a game, let alone an at-bat. A lot of these me first athletes could learn something from his approach.
I use the word esteem because I don’t want it to be confused with respect. He makes it damn hard to like anything about him because he just doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. I’m sure by this time most of you are acquainted with his website, 38pitches.com, where he shares his ‘insider’ perspective on the happenings within baseball. Like we really need more Schilling, he should hire someone to censor what he says, because more times than not he puts his foot in mouth and comes off looking like a pretentious jerk. It would really save him the trouble of having to call up ESPN and issue reprieves for all the stupid things he says. Normally I can shake it off and say, ‘that’s Curt’, but his latest post is so misguided and inane that I can’t help but address it.
In his latest rant he voices his displeasure about how the game has become inundated with steroids, something that I can totally understand. It has to be frustrating to compete against these robots when you play the game the right way. Is Curt one of good guys? Well, I’d like to say yes, but baseball’s very own P.I., Jose Canseco, recently stated that Schilling lied to the infamous 1998 grand jury about being clean. There’s so much going on right now, I don’t know what to believe, and I’m not going to start speculating now. Personally, I’m inclined to give Schilling the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Anyways, that not what I’m here to talk about, it’s this passage right here that had me scratching my head:
“So as a fan my thought is that Roger [Clemens] will find a way in short order to organize a legal team to guarantee a retraction of the allegations made, a public apology is made, and his name is completely cleared. If he doesn’t do that then there aren’t many options as a fan for me other than to believe his career 192 wins and 3 Cy Youngs he won prior to 1997 were the end. From that point on the numbers were attained through using PED’s… if that is the case with Roger, the 4 Cy Youngs should go to the rightful winners and the numbers should go away if he cannot refute the accusations.”
There are so many things wrong with this statement; I don’t know where to start. There’s the obvious, being that McNamee only claimed to have injected Clemens with HGH during his Cy Young year’s of 1998 and 2001, so only 2 of the awards are directly tainted. Then I have to ask, how do the numbers go away?
In 1998 Clemens faced 961 batters. Juan Gonzalez, the American League MVP that year, was not among the players on that list, but, the runner-up, Nomar Garciaparra, was. He happened to go 0-3 against him. So now you have to adjust his average accordingly since Clemens numbers disappeared, and also for every other player that was implicated in the Mitchell Report. Theoretically, what would happen if Garciaparra’s adjusted average was .400 and Gonzalez’s falls to something like .210? How do you now allow Gonzalez to keep the award? Do we hold a massive recount and go back through history and pick new winners for each year? What about individual games? Do they now forfeit those games? Clemens and Petite pitched in a combined 64 games in 2001, not to mention they made the World Series, try and fix that mess. I guess Schilling never pitched in the World Series if that’s the case.
What Schilling has to realize is that there is no way to fix this mess. Take the 1998 National League MVP for example. Sammy Sosa won and Mark McGwire finished second. Both are accused steroid users, so now the award falls all the way down to Moises Alou. What he has to realize is that there is no solution, and there never will be. I bet if we kept on digging, more names would surface. Maybe that guy is Alou, now the award goes to Greg Vaughn. It’s never ending.
This guy just needs to keep his mouth shut; he’s already gotten himself in trouble once for saying that Bonds used steroids. Then of course it was followed up with the obligatory reprieve the next day on Sports Center. That’s what’s going to happen again. He points out all this surface evidence that ‘proves’ Clemens used, pairs him in with Barry Bonds, and then cops a plea at the end stating that these guys are innocent until proven guilty. He just needs to keep his mouth shut and take the ball every fifth day, and then maybe we would respect him. You can’t call Roger a liar and a cheat for 2,000 words, and then try to excuse it at the end. It doesn’t work that way. I started out calling Schilling in an idiot, continued doing so throughout the article, and now at the end I’m doing the same thing.
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Sam 12.20.07 at 5:55 am
I’ll tell you what, for a guy that doesn’t talk to the press he sure finds his name in the papers he wants. The guy needs the attention, he’s an a-hole. If he was my client I’d put a muzzle on him and cut his DSL off. Oh wait, he doesn’t have an agent because he’s such (insert expletive here), and no one would want to represent him because he’s a total control freak and overly opinionated. In short, if I ever saw him in a bar I’d punch him the mouth. Not because I really have any ill-will towards him, he’s just that guy that no one can stand and you want to punch him just for being. No I don’t have anger management issues.
Isaac 12.20.07 at 9:43 am
Im so sick of Schilling…guy has become one of the most annoying figures in sports
Lord of the Rings 12.20.07 at 5:52 pm
Every jock should have a blog. Schillings only “crime” is that he refuses to be a vanilla lapdog like most jocks. Sure, he’s a tard most of the time. But its way more entertaining than ANY sports writer.
Fred 12.20.07 at 8:48 pm
Nomar wasn’t on the list.
Nick Underhill 12.20.07 at 10:21 pm
I know Nomar wasn’t on the list, I stated that he was one of the batters that Clemens faced in 1998. Meaning that if you erased Clemens accomplishments you would have to adjust the average of every player he faced.
Ralph 12.20.07 at 11:03 pm
I thought we still had freedom of speech in this country! Shilling is entitled to his big mouth as well as you are entitled to yours. Why should other players be penalized because Clemens screwed up? I think all those caught should bepunished. Who cares about how many players got away with using steriods?? Society doesn’t catch all our criminals either but we still punish those we can apprehed. The same goes for Bonds and all those other cheaters who have betrayed their youthful fans. Get real!!
Nick Underhill 12.21.07 at 12:17 am
I never said that Schilling wasn’t entitled to his opinion, I tried to make that clear with the opening paragraph where I said, ” We are all entitled to our opinions, and even if you don’t agree with what someone has to say, it doesn’t make that point of view any less valid.” Maybe Clemens should be punished, maybe he shouldn’t, that’s not what I was discussing here, it was Curt’s resolution to the problem. There is no way you can erase a players accomplishments, if it was just one guy, maybe, I stress the word maybe here. But not when it’s something like 90 guys. You’d have to adjust everyone’s average, then what about guys that hit home runs? Do they lose those because they beat Clemens? What about the games? The Yanks played in the Series with Clemens and Petite pitching, if we erase their accomplishments for that year they forfeit 60 some games. Can we invent a time machine for the Red Sox to take their place in the playoffs? It’s impossible to do so.
Nick Underhill 12.21.07 at 12:24 am
The only thing that can be done is we keep these offenders out of the Hall of Fame, even though I don’t neccessarily agree with that, and you put a page in the record books right before the 1990 season stating what happened with Bonds, Clemens, The Mitchell Report, The Game of Shadows, etc. As the years pass, more and more players names are going to come to light, some might be in the Hall-of-Fame already, so what do you do then? That’s why I don’t think you can keep guys out, it’s part of the era and it has already been woven into the fabric of the game. Give the players of this era a seperate wing if you don’t think they are worthy of the same space as Mays, Ruth, DiMaggio, Musial and the others. It’s too late to fix the past, so deal with it, but always with an understanding of what occured. Now it’s time to move forward with a resolution and, hopefully, better days.
Ralph 12.21.07 at 4:10 pm
The only point you make that I agree with is: “Now it’s time to move forward with a resolution and hopefully better days”. These cheaters still need to be punished for their transgressions. Failure to do so will only encourage future incidents of abuse. MLB and the players union need to be “encouraged” by Congress to act
ressively to cure this cancer.
Asfar as the records are concerned, MLB can do whatever it wants to do and I imagine they will or maybe they won’t. If you follow your logic about records to its conclusion it seems to me to be illogical! You end up punishing the innocent along with the guilty, i.e. the teams , fans etc.
The writers will decide the fate of the Hall of Fame candidates but a messagestill needs to be sent to those who are not eligable.
As I said in my initial submission; we can’t catch them all. Those we catch we need to punish to show the youth of this country that cheating is not acceptable.
Nick Underhill 12.21.07 at 4:38 pm
Congress already has stated that they are staying out of this. Since you think we can just erase players, explain to me how you do so. You don’t just strip them of their records and give them to the next guy, everything needs to be adjusted, tell me how you do that.
Ralph 12.21.07 at 7:05 pm
1. Congress IS NOT staying out of it. Hearings are scheduled wherein Selig and Fehr will be asked what they are going to do about their drug program (this has nothing to do with records).
2. You missed my main point (punishment). I don’t particularly care how MLB does it! My OPINION is that it should be done (take away their records I leave it to the experts as far as details are concerned.. Do you consider yourself to be an expert or are these statements just opinions?
3. I notice you fail to address the most important item, i.e; the impact of these incidents upon youth who look up to these athelets as role models. This is why I think those individuals should be punished. What’s your position on that?
4. No hard feelings!! MERRY CHRISTMAS
Nick Underhill 12.21.07 at 10:17 pm
Ralph, this article is addressing what Curt Schilling said, and how it isn’t pratical, and would impossible to do. Did you miss that part? Of course these are opinions, this is a sports column, not an encyclopedia. Why would adress these issues, the article was about Curt Schilling’s opinions, never did I propose a resolution to these problems, mainly because I wouldn’t know where to start. No hard feelings at all, no reason to have them. You disagree with what I write, that’s fine, I disagree with Schilling, it’s what makes the world go round. Keep coming back!
Lee 12.23.07 at 3:28 am
What he needs to do is mind his own damn business no one asked him for his two cents in the matter so why does he feel the need to talk about something that doesnt involved him, Schilling wishes he was half the pitcher Clemens the only reason why no one hasnt told him to shut up in Red Sox management because their too busy kissing his butt for breaking the curse in 2004 big whup they make him like sum kinda god in boston when he’s a regular pitcher who again wishes he could be like Clemens but then again Red Sox fans have no respect and no class so what makes me think that one of their players would too Hey Curt Do Everyone a Big Favor and MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS AND SHUT THE HELL UP
Nick Underhill 12.23.07 at 3:52 am
haha, oh man that’s hilarious Lee. Get Fired up boy! We should probably keep Schilling out of the Hall-of-Fame too, because his crowning moment, the bloody sock game, or should I say the Heinz 57 game, was a hoax. Manipulating the public is manipulating the public Curtis, think about it.
Ralph 12.23.07 at 4:20 pm
Oh Nick, surely you jest! That rejoinder to Lee is beneath you.
Nick Underhill 12.23.07 at 5:39 pm
Ralph- I was being facetious, ironic. The whole thing is just weird to me. Somehow Curt Schilling has became the poster boy in the cruisade against steroids, yet he has decieved the public with the bloody sock, alledegly, and there are steroid accusations against Curt from the games detective, Jose Canseco… It’s just strange
Ralph 12.23.07 at 9:49 pm
OK, I’m glad to hear that. Look, Shilling’s got a big mouth and a website to boot! He’s admitted that publically more than once. I wouldn’t rely on Canseco for anything but especially truthfulness, even given the fact that he has been right about some of the allegations he had previously made. The bloody sock: I saw that piece that it was phony and never heard another thing about it, no evidence, nothing!! Isn’t that sock in Cooperstown?? If so, wouldn”t they know the difference between catsup and blood??
Nick Underhill 12.23.07 at 10:07 pm
Actually, Mirabelli said it was a hoax, then when everything got out of control, he went back and said he was joking. And no, I don’t see how you would be able to tell the difference once it’s dried out. I’m not relying on Canseco, I said in the article I’m giving Curt the benefit of the doubt here. Now he has went out of his way to trash Jose over and over, in an attempt to smear his name. Come on man, we see through the smoke and mirrors. The motivation here is two-fold. I honestly believe that Schilling wants the game cleaned up, so do I, but the damage is done. You can’t just erase people. You can’t, it’d never work, and people would never go for it. The other side of it is that he has also had his name dragged through the mud, so now he’s trashing everyone else, that’s messed up. Don’t throw your colleagues under the bus, he should have voiced his grievances behind closed doors, instead, he is alienating himself. He wants everyone to think he’s the good guy here now that Jose has called him out. It’s so obvious, but people fail to see past the surface.
Ralph 12.24.07 at 9:05 pm
Well, let’s see, I believe Mirabelli said he was joking. Would that be facetious or ironic?? Do you really believe the Red Sox front office ( or any other MLB front office) would stand for that?? As for the blood on the sock, you’ve got to be kidding!! Even a kid in a high school chemistry lab can tell the difference between dried catsup and dried blood! Bump it up to a forensic lab and they’ll tell you the blood type!
As far as Canseco is concerned, who hasn’t trashed the guy? God knows he’s asked for it, wether he deserved it or not.
Look, I don’t know what statistics mean to you but to me they are just comparative reference points that indicate relative abilities of the individuals/teams etc. They CAN be erased, titles can be taken away/ recinded. This has happened before, i. e. Marion Jones. I’m not saying it’s fair in all cases, but as I previously said, I think it’s applicable in Bonds and Clemens case. I might also say for what its worth, that I WAS a big Clemens fan. I don’t believe you have to carry it on to cover all the batters he faced etc. Bonds will never be the record holder for HRs to me. That record for Bond is bogus! He couldn’t carry Aarons jockstrap!
Yes, I like Curt Shilling, probably as much as you dislike him, and in spite of his big mouth that he sometime engages before he engages his brain. I believe he’s a good man and I KNOW of his commitments to his foundation and the children that have benefitted from his charity. I guess you could say I am a fan.
Happy holidays!
Nick Underhill 12.25.07 at 4:33 pm
Ralph,
Stats mean everything to me, and I think a lot of other people feel this way as well. That’s why the steroid issue is so big in baseball, and not so much in football. It’s why Sean Merriman failed a drug test, yet the fans still voted him onto the ProBowl team, without so much as a bat of the eye. In baseball, numbers bridge the gap. It’s what allows fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandchildren, to bond over. It’s a way to bring their idols and our current idols onto a level playing field (supposedly), so that we can discuss or argue about who is better, with something to base our opinions on. If something were to happen that all of football’s past was lost forever, it would be no big deal. But if for some reason all of baseball’s were, it would be a travesty. Stats are everything in baseball, in no other forum is the past so important to the present. It’s what compell’s fans to pay three quarters of a million dollars to buy a baseball and brand it with that dreaded star. It’s why fans flipped out in 1961. It would be ideal to erase everything and act like it didn’t happen, but it did. Future generatinos deserve to know what happened, you can’t hide from your past. That’s why I say it’s only right to just place a page detailing our present timeline. The reason you can take a medal from Marion Jones is because that was a race. It’s possible to act like it never happened. In Clemens case, his trainer named two years that he used PEDs in which he won a Cy Young. Can you punish him for a crime he supposedly didn’t commit in the two years that were supposedly clean? There’s too much that we don’t yet, or may never will, to do something so drastic as to erase people from the record books. Furthermore, some of the offenses came prior to the PED ban, in which case, how do you act when they did nothing wrong? You take Barry Bonds single season homerun record and give it to a known offender that acted according to the rules? Would America be happy with Mark McGwire as the HR king? It’s too late for this. We just have to move forward, and cheer louder for the ‘good’ guys. I agree Bonds couldn’t carry Aaron’s jockstrap, there’s no arguement on my part. Don’t misconstrue what I am saying, I don’t support the users, I’ve just come to accept what happened. I’ll never be suprised by another name that pops up. I let myself believe that Rick Ankiel was a good guy, and maybe he did just use PEDs to help him recover, I don’t know, but never again will I allow that happen. It’s a shame, we shouldn’t have to go to every game with a magnifying glass, but this is the era we live in. No one wants to work hard for anything, they want it as fast and easily as possible.