Former Major League Baseball star and current ESPN analyst Curt Schilling has been removed from the network’s coverage of the Little League World Series after he tweeted a picture that compares Muslims to Nazis.
Schilling tweeted the photo, which he quickly deleted, which shows Adolf Hitler and the words, “It’s said only 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How’d that go?” Schilling captioned the picture, “The math is staggering when you get to the true #s.”
ESPN quickly suspended Schilling, saying in a statement to TheWrap, “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.”
Schilling then began interacting with users on Twitter offended by the tweet, telling one person, “That didn’t come across in any way as intended or interpreted,” and offered his apologies.
In a subsequent tweet, Schilling formally apologized: “I understand and accept my suspension. 100% my fault. Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part.”
Schilling was a starting pitcher for multiple World Series champions, including the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993, the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001 and the Boston Red Sox in 2004 and 2007.
Cris Carter, another ESPN analyst, was also forced to issue an apology recently when it was discovered he told players at the 2014 NFL Rookie Symposium they should get a “fall guy” in case they get into trouble with the law.
