While Curt Schilling’s 38 Pitches has received a cursory sneer in this space, the far more inquisitive Alex Belth (a blogger of considerable repute) interviews da ‘sphere’s newest Republican fuckwad superstar at SI.com.
SI.com : Do you read any baseball blogs?
Schilling: Sons of Sam Horn has been a staple for me forever. I have a running dialogue with the fans there, they are awesome. I’ve taken my fair share of crap there, but they are baseball freaks, fun to talk to, talk about, talk with. Boston Dirt Dogs is a good site. When the Globe bought them, it became more of a media outlet than a fan site. I know [Boston Dirt Dogs founder] Steve [Silva] is a pretty good dude. At times, the heckling aspect of that site probably rubs me wrong a little bit more than most.
SI.com: The tone of the site is caustic but it seems to take the Mickey out of everybody equally.
Schilling: The problem for me, and the thing that people don’t understand a lot of times, is that you might not be making fun of me, so I shouldn’t be offended, but that’s one of my teammates. I have to live with that guy, that’s a member of my family. That bothers me. If I was only bothered by bad things said about me, that’d make me horrifically selfish and immature. The attitude of every one of my teammates matters to me. But yeah, Steve is a good dude. He’s done a lot for me for charity and I think the world of him, I just wish the site had stayed more fan-based than it is.
SI.com: Do you think that Internet-based baseball analysts and writers should be available for BBWAA awards and Hall of Fame voting?
Schilling: Oh, it’ll come full-circle at some point. Why wouldn’t it? They already have a much larger impact than the Murray Chass’ of the world would like to believe. I mean, you’ve got guys who are putting out what I know to be legitimately valuable statistical information and its relevance to a game in a win or a loss at Baseball Prospectus. Then you have guys that I’m not too fond of, like Murray Chass, who says, “What is VORP and who cares?” It was a stupid article. The only thing it did was show his ignorance to me in modern day baseball. Because those numbers do matter, those numbers do have value. Do they have value to me in getting a player out? No. But I would tell you that there are a lot of front offices that use those numbers for a lot of important decision making.