Curt Schilling to Return to ESPN Following Twitter Gaffe

By PATRICK LUCE

Former Red Sox pitcher and Massachusetts resident Curt Schilling will be back in the broadcast studio for the baseball playoffs after having been suspended for an inflammatory tweet referencing Nazis, ESPN announced Monday.

The former World Series hero and ESPN baseball analyst had been suspended after he posted a tweet that showed Hitler performing his trademark salute and seemed to equate Muslim extremists with Nazis. The caption read “It’s said only 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?”

Sports network ESPN, for which Schilling is a baseball analyst, soon responded with a scathing Tweet criticizing Schilling’s stance and announcing he will no longer be covering the Little League World Series for the network. ESPN suspended Schilling from Little League World Series and Major League Baseball coverage.

“Curt’s tweet was completely unacceptable and in no way represents our company’s perspective. We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration,” the Tweet read.

The network has now lifted its sanctions and allowed the controversial analyst back on the air. But his social network habits don’t seem to have changed. He has continued to express his strong political beliefs, telling Mexican immigrants to go back to their homeland, criticizing efforts to rescue Syrian refugees, and suggesting that Sunday night’s blood moon is somehow related to the rise of ISIS, war in the Middle East and pretty much all things negative on the planet.

An ESPN spokesman has reportedly said the network has no problem with Schilling’s posts.