This is not a political post.

The only personal opinions you will find in this story are those of Mike Missanelli and Curt Schilling, who hate each other’s guts and have been slinging Twitter barbs for a long time now. It’s one of the better, underrated rivalries in Philadelphia sports.

Mike, as you know, is a progressive liberal. His social media feed is mostly leftish politics these days.

Schilling, meantime, used to be a regular guest on Mike’s show. He’s a hardcore conservative and Donald Trump supporter, and his social media feed is mostly MAGA stuff and live streams of him working on his model train set while wearing one of those magnifying glass thingers that you put on your head:

As you can imagine, Schilling was supportive of the people who broke into the Capitol two weeks ago. Among various MAGA retweets, he wrote this back on January 6th:

And then today we’ve got Mike calling for his OUTRIGHT removal from the Phillies Wall of Fame:

So putting aside the personal beef for a moment, it’s an interesting thing to consider. Could the Phillies remove somebody from the Wall of Fame because of their political beliefs? Or, could they rule that support of the Capitol invasion goes beyond anything political and simply doesn’t jive with franchise values?

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bob Brookover wrote a story earlier this week titled “Curt Schilling belongs in Hall of Fame even though his views are worthy of nothing but shame.” In the piece, Brookover mentions that the 2021 HOF balloting becomes public on January 26th, and we’ll know who gets in and who doesn’t.

He writes:

“Nothing Schilling said last week influenced the Hall of Fame voters who have increasingly shown their support in recent years because ballots had to be cast by Dec. 31. It’s kind of funny how earlier voting might actually benefit one of Trump’s most devout supporters. Schilling, in his eighth year on the ballot, received 70% of the vote, an increase of 9.1% from the year before. A player needs 75% of the vote, so a similar jolt to last year’s and Schilling will be a Hall of Famer.

Despite the vitriol that flows freely from Schilling’s social media accounts, I still think he belongs in the Hall of Fame, and I wrote exactly that a year ago at this time.

Full disclosure: I have no say in whether Schilling is elected. I stopped voting years ago because the people who run the Hall of Fame had no interest in either defining or eliminating the character clause that is part of the voting instructions. It simply states that “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.”

This is one of those cases where you wonder where the line should be drawn, if at all. Curt Schilling’s baseball credentials are worthy, but do his political beliefs keep him out? Is supporting the Capitol intrusion worse than taking steroids? Betting illegally on the sport? In a lot of cases, we’re comparing apples to orange. There’s no guideline for how we consider these things, or if they even matter. Essentially, we’re just asking ourselves if the Baseball Hall of Fame is “sticking to sports” or not.

So you tell me –

Does Schilling belong in the Hall of Fame? And is Mike right? Should Schilling be removed from the Phillies’ wall?