Curt Schilling’s ESPN career is in flux. The former World Series MVP has been known to share a controversial opinion or two on his social media pages, but he clearly stepped over the line this week. Schilling posted and deleted a picture comparing Muslims to Nazi Germany that drew swift and near-universal backlash.
In the aftermath, ESPN quickly removed Schilling from his scheduled Little League World Series assignments this week. Now we know that hiatus will extend to his MLB work. ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz tells Awful Announcing that Schilling will not be on the Sunday Night Baseball telecast this week.
ESPN has not publicly stated this absence as a suspension or given a time period on when Schilling may be back. In one of many apology tweets, Schilling did label it a suspension in taking responsibility for the offensive tweet.
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.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) August 25, 2015
Predicting the length of ESPN suspensions can be a sticky wicket. But given the network has been reticent to share a return date for Schilling, it’s fair to wonder when or even if he may return to the network given the nature of the controversial tweet.