DHL Dan - XIV

Shank writes his first picked-up pieces column in seven weeks; would you care to guess what the first subject is?

Shame on Curt Schilling

Picked-up pieces while wondering who’ll be next to be “sacked’’ by John Henry and Tom Werner . . .

■ There are parts of Rhode Island where failing to make good on million-dollar loan payments gets you more than a bloody sock. Red Sox adviser Jeremy Kapstein was out front on the 38 Studios loan scam two years ago when he ran for Rhode Island Lieutenant Governor and told WPRO-AM, “I have serious questions about the viability of that kind of offer to a company that is full of questions.’’

Kapstein was not alone. Massachusetts officials scoffed at the notion of loaning Curt Schilling’s company $75 million. The following appeared in this space in July 2010: “Hats off to the ship of fools known as the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. The RIEDC yesterday pledged a $75 million loan guarantee to lure Curt Schilling’s game company (the one with no games) to the Ocean State. It’s the best demonstration of sports sycophants gone wild with public money since the yahoos in Connecticut promised to give Bob Kraft the world to move his team to Yo Adriaen’s Landing in Hartford.’’

RIEDC director Keith Stokes resigned yesterday.

No thinking person wants to see a company fail (unless it's the NYT - ed.). There are hundreds of jobs at stake. But it’s hard to believe that Schilling, who earned $114 million during his baseball career, can’t make a $1.1 million loan payment.

Schilling is the man who railed about government spending, then had his hand out for corporate welfare, and now asks for more help from the confederacy of dunces in Rhode Island. This is not the Rhode Island Enron, and Schill is not Jeffrey Skilling, but it is bad, and it was avoidable if not for public officials losing all common sense in the aura of a baseball player who delivered on a promise to bring us a championship.