No Shows

This theme includes a couple of items, chief among them not reporting Shank's heart surgery from last month. I've been there myself, so I'm not exactly sure why I didn't post on this when it originally happened, but there it is.

In other no shows, Red Sox ace Curt Schilling won't be at Opening Day 2024 to commemorate the 2004 Boston Red Sox championship:

Curt Schilling will not attend Red Sox’ 2004 World Series celebration at home opener

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has declined the team’s invitation to be part of the April 9 Opening Day ceremonies at Fenway Park, a source with direct knowledge told the Globe.

The Sox on Monday announced plans to honor the 20th anniversary of the 2004 champions, who are famous for ending the team’s 86-year World Series drought.

Schilling was a key part of that team, forever earning his place in Red Sox lore by pitching with a surgically repaired ankle in Game 6 of the ALCS against the Yankees — known as the “Bloody Sock” game.

The Sox also plan to honor the lives of Tim and Stacy Wakefield that day. Tim, who started Game 1 of the 2004 World Series against the Cardinals, died in October from brain cancer. His wife Stacy died from a different type of cancer in February.

Schilling came under fire in September for revealing the health diagnoses of the Wakefields in the days before Tim’s death.

Dancing On A Grave

Posted with great glee and satisfaction, no doubt about it:

Schilling got 71.1 % of writers votes in his 9th yr of eligibility. He reacted by demanding to be removed from ballot, stating, "I'll defer to the veterans committee and men whose opinions actually matter.'' Today he got 43.7 % of their vote.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) December 5, 2022

DHL Dan CXLVXIII - Last At-Bat For Curt Schilling

A man who Shank can't stand has one more shot at the Baseball Hall of Fame:

Sunday is the judgment day Curt Schilling wanted, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while remembering when the Red Sox used the Hot Stove season to announce something better than advertisements on their uniforms …

▪ Curt Schilling could be named a Hall of Famer Sunday night. Same goes for Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds.

Baseball’s 16-person Contemporary Era Committee convenes at the Winter Meetings in San Diego Sunday, and just after 8 p.m., white smoke will likely emerge from the conference room, indicating that one or more new Hall of Famers have been chosen from a list of eight candidates who failed to gain election in 10 or 15 tries on the writers’ ballot.

Sheer math ensures that we won’t have a large class from this vote. A candidate needs 12 of the 16 votes to gain admission, and each voter can select no more than three. I’m expecting to see Fred McGriff elected. Schilling is a possibility. The other six men on the ballot are Clemens, Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, and Albert Belle.

It’s a potentially explosive night for MLB. This is the first opportunity for Schilling, Bonds, and Clemens to be judged by their peers. Seven Hall of Fame players — Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, Frank Thomas, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, and Alan Trammell — are on the committee. Others on the committee are executives Theo Epstein, Paul Beeston, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Dave St. Peter, and Ken Williams, plus media reps Steve Hirdt, La Velle Neal, and Susan Slusser.

McGriff has considerable support, including some former teammates who are members of the committee.

We'll see how much support the others on the ballot receive, including Schilling.

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.

DHL Dan CXIX - Au Contraire

Shank's been a critic of Curt Schilling, to put it mildly. And in another Picked-Up Pieces column, Shank leads off with criticizing Schilling for supporting the 'mostly peaceful' protestors in our nation's capital on Wednesday:

Picked-up pieces while nestling into the couch for the best pro football weekend of the year …

▪ Curt Schilling would help himself if he’d stop spewing hate and claiming he’s being punished by Baseball Hall of Fame voters because of his “politics.” Supporting a racist (really, Shank? - ed) mob that stormed the Capitol is not being “political.” Advocating for lynching journalists, calling Adam Jones a liar when he said he heard racist slurs at Fenway Park, bilking Rhode Island out of $75 million, collecting Nazi memorabilia, and posting anti-transgender material … these are not “political” stands.

Do you think Shank could articulate just what, precisely, was 'racist' about the protestors, aside from them being majority Caucasian? Does that also make Shank, a pasty white Irishman, racist as the dickens? This cheap eight grade name calling, initiated by him in this article and used far and wide by leftists across the land since time immemorial, detracts from the weight of his argument, or it should for most people. I've said before that Schilling has given his opponents plenty of ammunition and he seems to have done so again here. It's much easier to simply point out the massive rank hypocrisy of the Democrats and Shank-type media dorks (by and large the same thing) like this guy does, at least with respect to the local scene.

By the way - I have an English and a German copy of Mein Kampf. Does that mean I collect Nazi memorabilia? Shank wouldn't care unless my last name was Schilling. From there, the rest of the column's okay.

Prediction Made

Shank seems pretty sure former Red Sox pitcher (and Shank bete noire) Curt Schilling will finally make it into the Baseball Hall of Fame this time around:

The ballot is out and Curt Schilling will be voted into the Hall of Fame when results are announced in January.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 17, 2020

This is the next to last year Curt can make the HOF. Like I mentioned last year, all Curt has to do is not say anything political from now until mid-January and he's a shoo-in, because Shank and a good swath of other HOF voters hate conservatives.

Guilt By Association

Shank's been on a scumbag tour de force the past few weeks, hasn't he?

“We Build the Wall” board member Curt Schilling with the indicted Steve Bannon pic.twitter.com/ulgDnGLDbS

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 20, 2020

The implication's clear - Schilling's a bad guy because he posed for a picture with someone who was indicted in the past 24 hours. I read the first seven pages of that indictment (link is here) and found that part of the document to be fairly hyperbolic.

To use Shank's 'logic', then, he's as reprehensible as Schilling is made out to be because Sam Shaughnessy was arrested for drunken disorderly, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Is that how the game's played now?

Dan Shaughnessy, Wrong Again

Shank jumps on Curt Schilling for being 100% right:

What a guy. He so deserves to be honored https://t.co/opO4PKmrrm

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) June 24, 2020

Two things - anyone faintly familiar with recent history can recall many / dozens of these fake noose hoax crimes, and that's precisely what l'affaire Bubba Wallace has turned out to be. It should be standard practice to require proof of a 'crime', unless you're a leftist trying to score points against racist redneck NASCAR fans.

Secondly, I mentioned months ago that for Curt Schilling to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, all he has to do is lay low and not give his critics any ammunition to use against him. Aside from the fact he was right in making the Smollett 2.0 call, this is not how you lay low. It's another unforced error for Curt in my book and it's all but guaranteed Shank won't vote for him next time around, which I believe is Schilling's last chance.

Infield Shift

Longtime readers are aware of the ferocious negativity with which Shank treats certain Boston athletes, and none of more recent prominence than Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling. Imagine my surprise, then, at reading his latest column about the Hall of Fame ballots from yesterday, with Derek Jeter and Larry Walker the only two getting in this year. A positive opening headline:

Curt Schilling misses out on Hall of Fame, but he’ll get in next year

… is then quickly doused with a few splashes of negativity:

If you love the Red Sox and love Curt Schilling, the good news is that Schill is getting into the Hall of Fame one year from now.

As long as he does not do something incredibly stupid.

Take the man’s phone away immediately. Bar him from any form of social media over the next 12 months. Schill is officially on the threshold of baseball immortality. Results of the 2020 election demonstrate that Schilling is a lock for 2021 as long as he doesn’t make it impossible for voters to honor him.
...
Schill’s case for the Hall is complex. The myth of him not getting into Cooperstown — a fable Schilling prefers — is that he is being denied because of his “political opinions.’’

Bogus. Schill’s latter-day, off-the-rails rants and social media posts are not singularly what has kept him out. He is simply not a slam-dunk Hall candidate.

The charge of 'bogus' is, of course, absolute rubbish. Shank is well aware that the printed word, even when emanating from the fetid swamps of the area formerly known as 135 Morrisey Boulevard, carry weight and carry the message as far as it will go. Shank has printed enough negative columns about Curt Schilling that they have a certain momentum that carries on, even to this day. Not to mention that time Shank wanted Schilling thrown in jail because Schilling's software company went tits up after a $75 million loan guarantee from the state of Rhode Island. And Shank definitely didn't like it when Schilling described Shank as 'the second most bitter human I've ever known'. Thus, the battle lines have been drawn for years.

Shank then goes on to make a case that, compared to certain other pitchers, Schilling simply doesn't stack up. Since that part of the column's on much better ground, and perhaps even compelling, do you really need to mention Schilling's political opinion? You bet your ass you do, if you work for the Boston Globe and especially if you've been at war with the other guy for over a decade now.

Not Out Of Spite

And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Ceremonial first pitch tonight: 2004 team members David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Kevin Millar, Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, Keith Foulke, Alan Embree.
No Curt Schilling, who lives locally?
Red Sox exec: "We did not reach out to him, but it is not out of spite.''

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) October 24, 2018

DHL Dan LXXII - Get Yer Tinfoil Hats On! - II

Shank's first 'column' in three weeks is of the Picked Up Pieces variety, and veers right off the bat into conspiracy theory mode that would impress Alex Jones:

Picked-up pieces while strolling the beach wearing long sleeves and SPF 101 sunscreen . . .

■ It’s impossible to prove, but I will go the grave convinced that Curt Schilling’s final gift to New England baseball was his role in driving the Pawtucket Red Sox out of Rhode Island and into the bosom of Worcester. Schill’s $75 million handout from Rhode Island for his 38 Studios venture (it went belly-up two years later) created debt, triggered lawsuits, and poisoned Rhode Island officials against any taxpayer assistance when the PawSox came calling.

Just a reminder - Shank wanted Curt Schilling thrown in jail over this 'handout'.

How To Get Laughed Off The Air

It's been nearly three whole weeks since Shank's written a column for the Boston Globe. He has nothing to regurgitate in his (normally) weekly appearance on Zolak & Beetle's show on 98.5 The Sports Hub, and he's gonna lead off with this nonsense?

On today with @ZoandBertrand from 11-1. Blaming Schill for RI losing PawSox, plenty of Pats, Sox-Tribe, and Dan's Dates at 12:50.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 21, 2018

I'm pretty sure this will get slapped down for the crap that it is.

Dumb Tweets, By Dan Shaughnessy

From the man who wanted Curt Schilling thrown in jail comes this no-thought tweet:

OK if we blame Curt Schilling for Pawtucket Red Sox move to Worcester?

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 17, 2018

There Goes Shank's Next Ten Columns

It looks like Curt Schilling is yielding the fight against the fake Indian Senator Elizabeth Warren after giving the heads up to V.A Shiva Ayyadurai, the Cambridge / Belmont software guy who claims to have invented e-mail.

A Rhetorical Question For Shank

If Curt Schilling's post of a picture saying 'Rope. Tree. Journalist.' bothers you to the point that you devote part of a column to it in addition to withholding your Hall of Fame ballot for him, does it also bother you when yet another fellow journalist wants President-elect Donald Trump killed?

Just curious.

Shank's Hall Of Fame Ballot, Explained

The Boston Globe, in a rare example of accountability, decided to publicize their Baseball Hall of Fame voter's cards this year. Here is Shank's:

So how come I'm only voting for two guys this year?

It's complicated. And it doesn't feel good. But it's the best I can do.

Tim Raines gets this vote and I think he'll be elected in his final year of eligibility (as was Jim Rice). Raines' vote total has been climbing. A candidate needs to be checked on 75 percent of ballots and Raines was up to 69.8 percent last year. He has a lifetime on base percentage of .385. He stole 808 bases with a higher success rate than Ricky Henderson or Lou Brock. He reached base more than Roberto Clemente, Brock, Tony Gwynn, and Ichiro. He was a World Champion with the Yankees.

Vladimir Guerrero gets this vote in his first year of eligibility. He hit 449 homers. He swung at everything and still hit .318 for his career. He was an MVP once and close several other times. He had a cannon for an arm. The WAR folks don't like him that much and he wasn't a good baserunner given his speed, but he always had the look of a Hall of Famer. Doubt he gets in on the first ballot. That's it. Raines and Guerrero.

That's interesting - I might have had the look of a a professional cyclist back in the day, but that doesn't mean I'm winning the Tour de France (or any other pro bile race), ever! Curious criteria, there, indeed.

Of course, he still has to kvetch about Curt Schilling:

As for Curt Schilling, I'm putting Schill in a corner for this year after he tweeted that the notion of lynching journalists was "so much awesome." This is not a political statement by me. To my way of thinking, lynching is not a political issue. There's no liberal/conservative take on murder. A place in the Hall of Fame is an honor and I'm choosing not to honor Curt's strong candidacy this year.

It seems there are a professional journalist or two, as well as a CNN panel laughing about Trump's plane crashing (and a lefty CEO and sundry others) that are just fine and dandy with killing President-elect Donald Trump. It seems quite evident to me that there's far, far more liberal take on murder than there is conservative take.

But wait - there's more!

Lastly, can we dial down the vitriol and all just get along? I respect the opinions of all voters and fans. This is the baseball Hall of Fame. These are votes. Can we agree to disagree with one another's votes and opinions without giving in to the hate and toxicity that has polluted the process?

We're barely a week into the 2017 year, and Shank just wrote perhaps the most hypocritical, disingenuous and chutzpah-filled paragraph of his entire career. Numerous of his fellow journalists want Trump dead, and Shank has made a cottage industry out of spreading hate and vitriol since he joined the Globe back in 1981. We have been documenting every single example of that since our 2005 inception, and as many previous ones as possible. What a freaking joke.

All Worn Out from PEDs

The CHB thinks it might be high time baseball Hall of Fame voters put the whole steroids issue to rest.

In the hands of a skilled journalist, it's a fair question. But Shank is no skilled journalist.

As such, he can't actually address the real question. Instead, he resorts to the usual trinity of whispers, innuendos and lies, such as Jeff Bagwell is suspect because he got bigger as he got older. (As if that never happened before. Ever seen Tony Gwynn?)

But at least the white guys get some benefit of the doubt. (Was there seriously any question about Rogers Clemens using? His best friend testified under oath that he shot him up.) He falls back on his cliched racial denigrations (Sammy Sosa "played the language-barrier card before Congress," as if being Dominican is the same as growing up in Groton).

But why the change of heart? I have to think it has something to do with this guy:

Curt Schilling has, in the minds of many Hall voters, gone a step too far when he retweeted a photo of a guy in a shirt that read "Rope. Tree. Journalist." Shank and his ilk were all over talk radio saying this was the last straw, and that Schilling was welcome to shit all over any politician he pleased as and waste millions of dollars of the public's money long as he didn't wish ill on the Fourth Estate.

To that end, Shank's take is that Schilling's latest volley pushes him out of Hall consideration because of the so-called "character clause." Here's what the Hall actually says about voting:

Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon, or even a sports journalist, to recognize that character stops when the player retires. There's nothing in the clause that indicates that an ex-player who, for instance, gets busted drunk driving, as Carlton Fisk did, should be kicked out. Heck, Tony LaRussa got busted several times and they still voted him in. Is retweeting a bad joke honestly worse than getting behind the wheel of a 2-ton vehicle after a night of scotch ("I love scotch. Scotchy scotch scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly")?

So what about Shank's character? What about a guy who called David Ortiz, perhaps the most important athlete in the history of Boston sports ever, a "sad sack of you know what?" What about years of racist spitting and sputtering against every black and Hispanic athlete to cross 128? That didn't seem to stop him from accepting the Spink (or should that be Pink?) Award for baseball writing.

Big Papi is ultimately why The CHB wrote this column. Because in five years, he will have to decide whether to vote in Big Papi. Shank thinks Papi is a fraud. But if anyone can spot a fraud, it's a fraud.

Oh and Shank, if voting for the Hall is truly the "most volatile and toxic thing we do all year," there's always a remedy: Quit.

Here We Go Again

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling just gave Shank more material for his upcoming columns:

(CNN) — Outspoken former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is weighing a bid to unseat Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren when she comes up for re-election in 2018.

In an interview Monday with WRKO's "The Kuhner Report," Schilling said he had begun to seriously consider a political career and that one job had caught his eye.

"I thought about it, and one of the things I would like to do is be one of the people responsible for getting Elizabeth Warren out of politics," he said. "I think she's a nightmare and I think that the Left is holding her up as the second coming of Hillary Clinton, but Lord knows we don't even need the first one."

It should be entertaining, if nothing else.

Well, He Does Work For The Globe

Apparently Shank believes people that borrow money from a government and fail in a business venture belong in jail:

Instead of counting blessings that nobody's jailed over his failed 38 Studios (thx RI for $75 mill) gasbag Schill lashes out on Twitter.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) July 30, 2016

Don't Get Mad - Get Even!

That's what Curt Schilling did last week when Shank went on Mike Felger's show on Comcast Sports New England to talk about his firing from ESPN:

"He got what he was asking for, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for him right now," said Shaughnessy, with whom Schilling has feuded from almost the day the pitcher arrived in Boston. "I'm just going to miss him. He's good on TV."

Didn't take long for Schilling to respond . . .

@CSNNE Not even a contest, the 2nd most bitter human I've ever known. Doesn't make him bad or wrong many times, just bitter. #CHB

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 22, 2016

I want to know who's #1 in your book, Curt!

But wait - there's more!

And then he added a comment on CSN's Facebook page, under a link to the video . . .

“Don't need the advice of a bitter human who only remains relevant because of that coif and his desire to take opposing views, regardless of their factual truths. CHB was irrelevant the day we won game 4 and the World Series, ending something he made a career out of inventing, the "Curse". It was a curse of talent, nothing else. People like this need a boogeyman to create content, original thought escapes them”

Then, this one out of deep right field:

@dawsonoot two things, I didn't ask for your opinion and Mike Felger is about as large a know-nothing douche as ever existed.

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 22, 2016

You could accuse Felger of a lot of things; a lack of knowledge is not one of them. This looks like a shot at Felger inviting Shank on for the express / implied purpose of Schilling bashing, knowing full well Shank would deliver. In that case, the charge of douche is correct. Not like Felger gives a rat's ass either way...