Major League Baseball

Schilling explains his Hall of Fame comments

Published Jan. 9, 2015 12:00 p.m. ET

foxsports

So in case you missed it, Wednesday I wrote a column -- after reading some things on the Internet -- questioning Curt Schilling's claims that a) John Smoltz benefited, in Hall of Fame balloting, from his left-leaning politics, and b) Curt Schilling suffered, to the tune of maybe 100 votes, from his right-leaning politics. I mean, I tried to be nice about it. Because I respect so many things that Schilling's done, and because I think we'd have a lot to talk about. Also because I try to be nice, generally. But I did wind up dismissing his claims. Anyway, that led to this surprising, Twitter's-a-weird-place exchange (and left me feeling even more humbled than usual)...

@robneyer Would have been awesome if you'd actually done any work for the piece except writing.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) January 8, 2015

.@gehrig38 You know I'm on your side, right? Sorry if that didn't come through well enough.
— robneyer (@robneyer) January 8, 2015

@robneyer I took it the other way, my apologies. Almost humorous that a joke like that is a headline maker. Awesome world we live in
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) January 8, 2015

@gehrig38 Wait, I want to be really clear about this: Saying Smoltz is Democrat and you lost 100 votes because of politics was all a joke?
— robneyer (@robneyer) January 8, 2015

@robneyer not even a question. Of course it was. I've known Smoltzie's as staunch a Conservative as I am for 20 some years.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) January 8, 2015

@robneyer I didn't lose any votes (that I know of anyway) being a Republican, 4 guys who should have made it, did.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) January 8, 2015

@gehrig38 You have my abject apologies, then. Good luck next time around. You deserve a lot better.
— robneyer (@robneyer) January 8, 2015

@robneyer No worries. After last 3 years it's all about tomorrow. Baseball owes me nothing after what it gave me for 20+ years.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) January 8, 2015