Former MLB player Reggie Jackson said Curt Schilling expressing his beliefs kept him from entering the Hall of Fame.
Jackson said Schilling only had himself to blame for not being elected to the Hall of Fame in an interview published Thursday by NJ.com.
Reggie Jackson on Curt Schilling HOF snub: ‘Freedom of speech got your a** out of Cooperstown, bro’ https://t.co/CyMKTvvSIC
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 28, 2021
“I would say to Curt, ‘Look at what you did. You took yourself out of the Hall of Fame because of what you say and how to express yourself and how you think.’ Freedom of speech is great, but we can’t have a country with white supremacy, Nazis, Black Panthers, racist stuff and anti-Semitics. We can’t have people wearing swastikas because it’s a freedom of expression,” Jackson told the outlet. “Come on!” (RELATED: Not One Baseball Player Elected To 2021 Hall Of Fame Class)
Jackson specifically claimed “freedom of speech” kept Schilling out of the hall of fame.
“Freedom of speech got you freed out of the Hall of Fame,” Jackson told the outlet. “Freedom of speech got your a-s out of Cooperstown, bro!”
“I don’t care if Schilling is conservative or not conservative,” the former Yankees player explained. “That doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s stepping out on the balcony and yelling out something to defame Jews or Muslims or any other ethnicity or gender. Curt, get away from here with that.”
Schilling has expressed controversial views in the past and has recently come under fire for his apparent support of the Jan. 6 pro-Trump Capitol riots.
Schilling told Outkick host Clay Travis that he would be in the Hall of Fame if he had never made any public political statements.
“You are talking about a group of people who are 85% white and 90% male — and they are lecturing me on diversity and racism,” Schilling told Travis.
“The hatred for President Trump and conservatives runs deep,” he added.