Is Schilling a Hall of Famer? 

No.

Unless we're defining Hall of Fame as being for those who are famous partly for ability and partly for stunts and partly for outspokenness.  Was Schilling a "clutch" pitcher? Yes, whatever that means.

Yes, yes, I know -- per BaseballReference.com, both Schilling's HOF "Standards" AND "Monitor" are higher than Morris' ... but both are above "Likely HOFer" in the Monitor and both are below "Average HOFer" in the Standards. And Morris had better counting stats, again, for whatever that's worth.

Schilling was a great pitcher who made it to the World Series stage with three different teams, winning two. Morris was a great pitcher who made it to the World Series stage with three different teams, winning all three (granted, the Jay title was no thanks to him).

That is all.

I really do not like him as a person at all, and say "Good riddance."  I also wanted to refute the idea of Schilling as a HOFer, but I looked up his career stats and it'd be difficult to argue.  Here's hoping he continues to keep any of his blow-hard opinions he has on his blog.

Is he a Hall of Famer?

Don't be silly. It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of the Scientifically Evaluated. He's a Hall of Famer the same way Don Drysdale and Catfish Hunter are Hall of Famers - among the best pitchers of their time, but also among the most celebrated and discussed players of their time. And Schilling, of course, was clearly a better pitcher then either - and while Hunter in particular had a well deserved reputation as post-season performer, Schilling actually was one of the greatest post-season pitchers in the history of the game. That discussion begins with Mathewson, Gibson, and Schilling. Then you can add other contenders.

His career arc is completely different from Drysdale and Hunter, both of whom came to the major leagues as teenagers, worked very, very hard and racked up most of their accomplishments in their 20s, and were both through at an early age. (Drysdale won 19 games after age 30, Hunter only won another 23.) Schilling's a little more like Dazzy Vance, who won 197 games and led the NL in strikeouts seven years in a row after turning 30, having won exactly 0 games prior to that.

Drysdale and Hunter each won a Cy Young - Schilling didn't, but that's a fluke of history. Schilling could have easily won two or three of the awards if his timing had been a little better. Normally going 22-6 with 293 Ks does get you a Cy Young, and if that doesn't work you'd think that maybe winning even more games (23-7) and striking out even more guys (316) the following year would do the trick. But Schilling really wasn't quite as good as Randy Johnson those years, just as Juan Marichal (25-8, 2.41, 248 Ks) wasn't quite as good as Sandy Koufax in 1963. Or in 1966 (Marichal was 25-6, 2.23).

But just because you're not quite as good as Randy Johnson or Sandy Koufax at their absolute peaks doesn't mean you're not pretty damn great yourself.

And a trivia note. With 3,116 strikeouts and a mere 711 walks, Curt Schilling has the greatest strikeout to walk ratio (4.38 to 1) of all time. I didn't know that. (Well, technically he's behind Tommy Bond, who was active when pitchers threw underhand from 50 feet and it took nine balls to issue a walk.)

Anyway, I'm really going to miss the old blowhard.

Which is what he was (and is!), and he irritated me almost as often as he irritated every one else out there. But I think there's always room for an athlete who doesn't always recite the cliches the learned at Crash Davis' knee. There's never any shortage of those guys.

He was the Reggie Jackson of his time - he wasn't really the best player of his time, except possibly in his own mind. He was up there among them, though. They were players who carried their own spotlights around with them, men who assumed they were the centre of attention, took it as their due, and liked it that way. They both irritated an awful lot of people, and you can nit-pick their accomplishments if you want - hey, Reggie Jackson did have a lifetime BAVG of .262 and struck out more than 2500 times. But what we'll remember about both of them though is what they did in the biggest moments of all, when the spotlight was brightest. When they didn't merely rise to the occasion, they transcended it. Schilling in the 2004 LCS and Jackson in the 1977 series are two of the greatest baseball memories I carry.

I beg to disagree.

Britney Spears is not a shoo-in for the rock'n'roll hall of fame.

At least, not while I still have breath left in my body.

No argument exists.

Sure it does. There's a fair argument to be made that Run DMC brought rap music as a genre into the mainstream in a way that changed popular music forever. None of the others you list can say that -- Alice Cooper and Kiss had a unique look but their music, while great, was not really "groundbreaking" or "genre-defining."

Now, all that said, I don't think Run DMC belongs in the Rock Hall, and the argument I make above is in itself probably granting them wayyy too much credit. But the argument can be made.

Mick while your statement holds true for the majority of those bands, Jeff Beck truly was an innovator and master on the guitar. He inspired legions of people to pick up the guitar and his influence is one of those things that can't really be traced, although it is surely deep and far reaching. As well, Deep Purple is considered one of the first bands to mix classical musical elements with hard heavy rock, and are considered one of the early pioneers of the genre known as Heavy Metal (along with Led Zeppelin and a few others).

And really, while G&R didn't do anything groundbreaking, they're Guns and freaking Roses, and for Appetite for Destruction alone they should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. 

Why do they call it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? That name is really a misnomer. It should be called the Hall of Fame for Really Successful Mainstream Musicians With a Few Exceptions.  Not as catchy though... 

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