Curt Schilling Can’t Shy Away From a Twitter Fight

Both former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and his wife, Shonda, have a hard time stepping away from the keyboard, and doing what most celebrity-types have to do on a daily basis when commenters egg them on: ignore them.

Prior to Game 2 of the World Series between the Sox and Cardinals at Fenway Park Thursday night, an anti-Schilling supporter started bad mouthing the now-retired pitcher, expressing anger over the fact that he still has a job, providing baseball commentary on ESPN, despite the fact that his video gaming company, 38 Studios, went bankrupt, costing people their jobs and burdening the state of Rhode Island with millions of dollars of debt.

But without hesitation, Schilling, although he has tens of thousands of followers constantly shouting at him in 140 characters online, engaged in the conversation, firing back at the user, calling him a “keyboard tough guy”:

To be fair, it’s easy to immediately go after the fact that Schilling’s business is now non-existent. He even recently took heat for putting his house up for sale, which caused his wife to have her own defensive social media fit in order to back up the family. The targets are out in the open, and will undoubtedly add salt to a still very-open wound.

But the ferocity of Schilling’s responses, over and over again, don’t help his image much—especially if he is trying to rebuild and move on. The Tweets on Schilling’s end were deleted, but not before a screenshot of the conversation was captured and shared on sites like Reddit almost immediately.

Schilling had a similar interaction with a Rhode Island resident back in June, where he threatened to knock the user out for a comment he made about Schilling paying back the debt left on Rhode Island’s shoulders after his company folded.

All of the anger seems to center around the fact that Schilling still has a job hosting a highly-watched ESPN segment, while former employees took the hit when 38 Studios crumbled. But how is he supposed to pay his debt if he doesn’t have a job? A guy needs to work to make money.