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October 30, 2004
HERO NO MORE You can
HERO NO MORE
You can take the Curt Schilling jersey off my Christmas list.
I know what you're thinking. You think I'm just mad because Schilling endorsed Bush and was going to make a campaign appearance with him until public reaction made him back out for "medical reasons." You think that if Schilling had endorsed Kerry, I'd be fine with what he did.
You're wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I was personally very disappointed to hear Schilling reveal that he is a member of the Dark Side. Now I know how Michael Jackson's biggest fans felt when they first realized that he likes to touch little boys.
But though I am disappointed, I'm not angry with Curt Schilling for his politics. I'm angry with him because he chose to inject his personal politics into the biggest New England sports moment ever. During a moment bigger than any one person, he believed it was about him and his ideas.
Politics has even less place in baseball than it does in art. And if it's annoying when actors spout politics when winning an Oscar or Grammy, it's outright infuriating to have sports figures doing it.
The city of Boston, all of New England, and citizens of Red Sox Nation everywhere waited 86 years for this moment. When it finally came, it was euphoric, it was delicious, it was altogether glorious. How self-involved and narcissistic do you have to be to inject your personal agenda -- whatever it is -- into a moment that's so clearly about millions of other people, a moment that's been generations in coming? This day, this weekend, this moment... this feeling was something people waited for all their lives. They deserved to be able to savor it for what it was.
Whether Schilling was supporting Bush or Kerry is irrelevant. In an election as close as this one, with people as polarized as any American electorate in a century or more, an endorsement of either candidate was bound to somewhat alienate about half of the fan base. It didn't ruin things per se, but it left a taste in the mouths of some of the fans -- as a Kerry endorsement would have -- and Schilling had no business acting as if he and his personal beliefs were bigger than this moment.
It's a shame such a huge talent has such a huge ego to go along with it.
