Schilling had it right (on two counts, anyway)

There was an absolute offensive riot of a baseball game in Philadelphia that damp October night in 1993, as Game 4 of the World Series went clamorously to the Toronto Blue Jays by a score of 15-14.

Instant analysis engulfing the press box magnetized to the observation that the strike zone had somehow shrunk to the size of a legal pad, with hitters pouncing for 32 hits, 13 of them for extra bases in a pyrotechnical drama that sprawled well to the other side of midnight.

The Phillies, who had just wrestled the National League East Division title from the three-time defending

champion Pirates and upset the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS, suddenly found themselves down, 3-1,to a Toronto club that seemed altogether unstoppable.

So they handed the ball to Curt Schilling, who the very next night stepped in front of a freight train and stopped it cold. For Game 5, Schilling threw a 2-0 shutout in which he allowed only five singles to the same scold of Blue Jays that included Hall of Famers Paul Molitor, Rickey Henderson and Roberto Alomar, not to mention a not-yet-serieshero named Joe Carter.

It was in that postseason that Schilling established himself as a brilliant big-game pitcher, a reputation he would burnish through the remainder of his 20-year career. And yet ...

“I don’t think I’m a Hall of Famer,” Schilling wrote to the relevant Cooperstown operatives this week.

Funny, I don’t think so either, but I wouldn’t deny he’s awfully close. Voters remained conflicted enough in Schilling’s ninth year on the ballot that he fell just short of induction. Again. The fact that no one else got the required 75% of the vote this time around didn’t appear to expiate the situation, at least based on Schilling’s reaction.

“I will not participate in the final year of voting,” Schilling said at the end of the same missive. “I am requesting to be removed from the ballot. I’ll defer to the veterans committee and men whose opinions actually matter and who are in a position to actually judge a player.”

He doesn’t want your stupid Hall of Fame anyway, so there! And you can forget being invited to his birthday party, too!

I’m pleading with my fellow members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors to honor Schilling’s request, even as I’m pretty sure both organizations take themselves way too seriously to let that happen. As the courts would say, Mr. Schilling has no standing on the matter, but this is an opportunity to save everyone yet another round of exhaustive election tedium. A simple, “OK, fine, you’re off the ballot” ought to do it.

The baggage around the Schilling candidacy has begun to resemble the tarmac area of a departing flight from Disney World. Speculation is ripe that the pitcher’s penchant for right-wing nutbaggery has helped close the Hall’s doors to him.

For me, it’s not that Schilling once tweet-praised a photo of someone in a shirt that read, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required,” by saying, “OK, so much awesome here.” It’s not that he tweeted out support for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that killed five people; it’s not that he was suspended by ESPN for comparing Muslim extremists to World War II-era Nazis; it’s not that ESPN fired him for his comments about the transgendered; it’s not that he’s a conservative contributor to Breitbart (you’ll excuse the redundancy) or that he was on the board of Steve Bannon’s “Build the Wall” crowdfunding scam that bilked some $25 million from hundreds of thousands who were originally told Mexico was paying for it; it’s not that he stumped for Trump or voted for Clinton, both of which he did; it’s not even that if the My Pillow guy can run for governor, Curt Schilling could easily run for president.

It’s not any of that, and neither is it all of that. All of that stuff (except the Clinton vote) happened after he retired and had no impact on the game. Some voters might think Schilling’s politics trigger the so-called character clause in their instructions. That’s too much of a stretch in my view. Omar Vizquel’s candidacy is a more difficult question as the great shortstop dropped from 53% to 49 %, likely on the news that Major League Baseball was investigating him for domestic assault. The candidacies of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are another question entirely, as their PED-soaked resumes have kept them well short of 75%.

The revered columnist and baseball analyst Buster Olney floated a solution to this whole mess on Twitter: “Moving forward, the baseball writers would be best served by insisting the Hall of Fame apply the character clause itself. Let the HOF declare which players have passed its character test before forwarding the ballot of eligible players to the writers.”

I disagree. We’re big boys and girls. Our right-and-wrong radar ought to have an acceptable standard of proficiency, but I will say that moving forward, the baseball writers would be best served to swear off the use of the phrase, “moving forward,” which adds nothing to anything.

But I digress.

To me, the Hall of Fame ballot separates the great from the good, and sometimes the great from the very good, and sometimes the great from the very, very good. Schilling is in this last category, as his 71% approval among the voters clearly illustrates.

According to baseball-reference.com, in Schilling’s typical season (his 162-game averages), he went 15-10 with a 3.46 earned run average. Very good, but not great. Great is Sandy Koufax (16-8, 2.76), Tom Seaver (1611, 2.86) and Bob Gibson (1712, 2.91), all Hall of Famers. Schilling’s postseason ERA was 2.23. Gibson’s was 1.89, Koufax’s 0.95.

I’ve heard too many times this week that Schilling should be a lock for the Hall of Fame. Please. He was traded five times, and when his redoubtable skills were freshest in the writers’ collective memory, in his first year on the ballot (2013), he drew 39% of the vote.

Are we going to do all of this again next January? Give the man what he wants — removal from the ballot. Let’s save ourselves from ourselves.