Former Red Sox star Curt Schilling is making his debut on the Hall of Fame ballot this year, though the noted big game pitcher is being overshadowed a bit.
He’s sharing his debut with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, players whose spectacular numbers are mixed with high profile allegations of performance enhancing drug use.
Schilling doesn’t have Clemens career numbers, but his 216 wins, 3,116 strikeouts and 3.46 ERA earned him a spot on the ballot.
Schilling won three World Series championships, including his “bloody sock” performance for the Boston Red Sox in 2004.
After retiring from baseball, Schilling founded 38 Studios, a now-bankrupt video game company that has been a focus of controversy in Rhode Island, where the state gave the company a $75 million loan guarantee to relocate from Massachusetts.
All of Schilling’s MLB highlights and private business low lights aside, this ballot presents the most polarizing Hall of Fame debate since Pete Rose. It will now be decided by the baseball shrine’s voters: Do Bonds, Clemens and Sosa belong in Cooperstown despite drug allegations that tainted their huge numbers?
In a monthlong election sure to become a referendum on the Steroids Era, the Hall ballot was released Wednesday, and Bonds, Clemens and Sosa are on it for the first time.
Bonds is the all-time home run champion with 762 and won a record seven MVP awards. Clemens took home a record seven Cy Young trophies and is ninth with 354 victories. Sosa ranks eighth on the homer chart with 609.
Yet for all their HRs, RBIs and Ws, the shadow of PEDs looms large.
“You could see for years that this particular ballot was going to be controversial and divisive to an unprecedented extent,” Larry Stone of The Seattle Times wrote in an email.![]()
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