Curt Schilling Retires | Baseball Loses Free Thinker (Pt. 1)

For the love of the game

For sports fans, there is a currency of trust and admiration that we place in our favorite players. For the span of two to three hours, we make personal loans of our time and money in order to watch them perform. In return, they give us enjoyment and fire our imaginations.

When the end of the line comes for a sports hero, it is a somber moment for true fans. For myself and millions of baseball fans worldwide, I say goodbye to Curt Schilling.

A warrior-pundit

Ken Davidoff of Newsday writes that Schilling, like Barry Bonds before him, has “helped destroy the athletes as role models paradigm.” In the case of Schilling, however, he has knocked down false idols because it is in the best interests of the game of baseball. He always did this with a free, uncensored tongue, particularly when it came to the steroid controversy in Major League Baseball. Check out his blog 38pitches for this and more.

But I take issue with Davidoff over a number of points he attempts to make about Schilling. I acknowledge that I am a fan of Schilling, but the New York-based pundit Davidoff clearly shows his New York bias. What he calls Schilling behaving “like such a horse’s you-know-what,” I call him being outspoken about what he believes in. Some residual resentment from Schilling and his “bloody sock” performance against your beloved New York Yankees in 2004? Schilling helped “reverse the curse” of the Bambino for the Boston Red Sox and has always been a student of the game. Davidoff at least will acknowledge that. ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "Curt Schilling Retires | Baseball Loses Free Thinker (Pt. 1)"