DHL Dan CXXII - Next Year's News Today!

In the latest extravaganza of the Picked Up Pieces column, I wasn't quite sure what to expect based on this tweet:

Thanks, Chris https://t.co/Ju8XGZv0i7

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 29, 2021

A few things to point out. Gasper's correct in the sense that being someone's 'foil' can mean 'to prevent something undesireable from succeeding'. That's certainly the case with Schilling, who Shank wanted to put in jail for defaulting on a $75 million loan from the state of Rhode Island. I wouldn't want someone like that as part of the jury pool. Gasper then uses another interesting word to describe part of this column - hilarious'. Unless this is some old inside joke between Globies, does anyone think Shank is funny? Funny how, you may ask? Let's check out the column:

We’re a year away from the wildest Hall of Fame election ever, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while daydreaming about how — in a normal year — my JetBlue flight would be landing in Tampa for Super Bowl Week right about now …

Shank whining about not getting a paid vacation from the Globe to go to Florida for a week? That's not funny. Reading about Shank whining about not getting the free vacation? That's fucking hilarious!

▪ Look for David Ortiz to sail into Cooperstown when the Hall of Fame Class of 2022 is announced at this time next year. Big Papi comes on the ballot for the first time in December, and I believe he’ll easily vault over the 75 percent threshold.

It’s going to be the wildest Hall election ever, which is saying something given events of this past week. Ortiz and Álex Rodríguez are the top achievers among the new candidates in 2022, and they will be on the same ballot with Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Curt Schilling (sorry, Schill, you don’t get to withdraw your name), who’ll all be in their 10th and final year of consideration.

Shank thinks Ortiz is a lock (ditto) but Schilling is not:

▪ I’ve sent Schilling’s 1,200-word Tuesday night screed to multiple geniuses and soothsayers, and nobody seems to be able to decode the thing. Curt keeps telling us he’s not a Hall of Famer but anybody who didn’t vote for him is a coward (Schill should have blamed the BBWAA’s Dominion voting machines).

Schilling says he’ll gladly turn his candidacy over to the Veterans Committee, but a quarter of that committee will be media members, and there might also be a few Hall of Famers curious about Curt’s position papers on Black Lives Matter issues.

Let’s also remember that Schilling went out of his way to bury Clemens and Bonds, which never plays well with ex-players.

Nobody can figure out what Curt’s issue is with the Red Sox (”What Mr. Henry and Mr. Werner did to my family and I in my final year …”). In his final season (2008), the Red Sox paid Schilling $8 million for not throwing a single pitch. By this logic, Curt also must be angry at the taxpayers of Rhode Island for what they did to his family.

▪ Got an e-mail from a Hall of Famer who was not buying Schill’s response or his logic. The thrust of this missive was that Schilling is copping out, taking his ball and going home instead of letting voters who have ruled on the Hall since 1936 make a decision on his candidacy.

Schilling always wanted the ball in the big games, so where is that now? This e-mail from a Hall of Famer doesn’t bode well for Schill’s hope to gain points with the Veterans Committee.

Schilling’s request to be removed from the ballot presents as an attempt to avoid a 10th rejection. He doesn’t make the rules, and the Hall should reject his request.

So if anything was hilarious with this column, it's purely inadvertent. That said, this is a pretty good column.