ESPN suspends Curt Schilling after contentious tweet

An apology was issued by the previous World Series MVP Tuesday after ESPN suspended him for posting Twitter comparing Muslims to Nazis an image.

The contentious place, released Tuesday morning, featured an image of Adolf Hitler in Nazi regalia, as well as the words “It Is said just 5-10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, just 7% of Germans were Nazis.

In addition to the picture, Schilling wrote: “The mathematics is staggering when you get to authentic #’s.”

The tweet was immediately deleted, but not before a screenshot were posted online, as it made its way on the other side of the Web, igniting widespread indignation.

“Curt’s tweet was totally unacceptable, and in no way represents our firm’s view,” wrote Josh Krulewitz, ESPN’s vice president of communications. “We made that point quite firmly to Curt and have removed him from his present Little League appointment pending additional thought.”

Told of Schilling’s remarks Tuesday, Thomas Barfield, a professor at Boston University who serves as manager for the school’s Institute for the Analysis of Muslim Societies and Culture, called Schilling’s place “snarky and designed to be blatantly offensive,” and held it as signs that ignorance may come from everywhere.

“If you heard it from some man in a pub, you could blow it away. Some man talking to the men in the pub in the TV may have a louder speaker, but it does not make any more sense.”

Schilling isn’t a stranger to eyebrow-raising Twitter action. A year ago, he used the social networking website to take part in a long discussion regarding development, saying at one point that “it is been disproved about a thousand times.”

He’s been forthright in his beliefs that are old-fashioned. And after failing to get the votes needed to be inducted into the 2015 Hall of Fame class of baseball, he proposed in a interview with WEEI that his political views might have become the reason because of his exclusion.

With the news of Tuesday, Schilling reaffirmed his position on a drawn-out record of athletes and former athletes that have drawn criticism for contentious social networking postings.

More lately, Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones was fined and suspended after posting comments critical of Michael Sam, the first openly gay player of the NFL.

Meanwhile, the head of the Rhode Island state police allegedly admitted that authorities were conducting a criminal investigation right into a deal involving the state and Schilling’s 38 Studios before this month. A couple of years following the 2010 loan agreement, Schilling’s firm declared bankruptcy.