Schilling could still cost himself this vote

My ballot for the 2021 class of the National Baseball Hall of Fame will not be filled in and postmarked until Dec. 31, the last possible date for returns. Two reasons:

Curt Schilling deserves every available minute to open his mouth or his Twitter account to say something so seditious, even treasonous, to ruin his candidacy for me.

And, if Schilling does get into the Hall of Fame by one vote on his ninth attempt, how delicious the irony if one mail-in ballot cast on the last possible day — something that seems to roil Big Schill with presidential elections — were to place him among baseball’s immortals.

It was the July 2019 weekend when Mariano Rivera and Mike Mussina, two Yankees central to a generational rivalry with the Red Sox, were inducted into the Hall of Fame. And no Red Sox from the era were.

I wrote these words arguing that someone was missing: “Schilling stands guilty of being a jerk, maybe a bigoted one, certainly a reckless-talking blowhard. Yet as a voter I have not and will not make the jump to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. He absolutely deserves it.”

I have been voting for Schilling for years. Nothing he has said or done would dissuade me. Only this is 2020; this is the year everything has changed. And so has my viewpoint.

There has been rationale, some fortunately ignored in the modern era of public ballots, among a number of BBWAA voters over the past 85 years. Like don’t vote for a player in his first year of eligibility or give little or no more weight to postseason numbers than regular-season numbers. Or in years when pickings are slim,

Winslow Townson / Associated Press Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling tips his hat as he walks off the field after being taken out of Game 2 of the 2007 World Series.