Pitcher Curt Schilling claimed his political beliefs kept him out of the baseball Hall of Fame in an interview Wednesday with Outkick.
Schilling also discussed his decision not to be on the ballot for his last year of eligibility.
“I wanted it over,” Schilling told host Clay Travis. “I didn’t want to go through it again.”
“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 said of the judges.
Schilling and Travis both agreed that if Schilling had never made public comments about his political beliefs that he would have been voted into the Hall of Fame.
“The hatred for President Trump and conservatives runs deep,” he added. (RELATED: Reggie Jackson Says Curt Schilling’s Beliefs Kept Him Out Of The Hall Of Fame)
Schilling claimed the writers have previously elected a “pedophile” to the writers’ Hall of Fame.
“This is a group of people who voted for a pedophile in the writer’s wing of the Hall of Fame,” Schilling said. “They voted for a guy who molested his niece.”
Schilling later identified the writer as Bill Conlin. Conlin was accused of sexually molesting three women and one man while they were children, but was never charged because of the statute of limitations, according to a report published by Bleacher Report.
“You got 90% white, liberal college males standing in a clubhouse of players of every race, some don’t even have an 8th-grade education but are making $25 million a year,” Schilling explained. [The writers], who graduated from Harvard, are bitter.”
Schilling told Travis there should be a plan in place to “cut away the fraud” from the group of judges.
Schilling said that if a player gets 90% of the vote, all voters who didn’t vote for that player should lose their ballot, according to Outkick. Schilling also said that if a writer votes for a player that only receives one vote, that writer should also lose the ballot.
Nobody was elected to the Hall of Fame for the 2021 class. Both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens didn’t receive the necessary amount of votes. Bonds and Clemens each have one year left of eligibility.
Schilling most recently came under fire for his apparent support of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. However, the voting had already closed by the time Schilling made those comments.
Schilling was suspended from ESPN in 2016 after he made anti-Muslim remarks and was fired after he made remarks about transgenderism, according to Politico.
“I voted for Curt at least twice, but not so in the last two ballots (for classes of 2020 and 2021),” write Claire Smith told the outlet.
“My decision was based on character (which I had been told is a valid consideration voters can use in their HOF ballot decision),” she added. “My decision was made after Curt retweeted allegations that the mass murder of the children of Newtown, Ct., was a hoax.”