Generally speaking, baseball players are not funny. Actually, that's totally subjective. The sense of humor of most ballplayers is there. It's rock solid. Sometimes it's simply a matter of the material.
There are only so many hotfoots and trades to Japan that can be trotted out there before folks get wise.
Of course senses of humor are just like style or taste in that everyone thinks theirs is good. Guilty as charged on all the above...
Nevertheless, baseball players are never edgy. Don't expect depth in the comedic stylings. Rare exceptions notwithstanding, they have that edgy trait stomped out of them on the way to the Majors. Conformity isn't exactly expected, but the other side of that isn't condoned either.
Or something like that.
Anyway, the point is there is a lot of unintentional comedy on the Major League Baseball scene. Tons of it, actually. It comes from everywhere and it never gets old. So in other words, hanging around baseball is the funniest place on earth.
Still, even those with a fine-tuned comedy radar may have missed this one:
Curt Schilling was the baseball version of Ron Burgundy.
Yeah, there it is.
According to Jason Gay's piece in The New Republic Online (via Can't Stand the Bleeding), "Schilling was a locally beloved institution--a hero in Boston, Philly, and Arizona--with a comically inflated sense of self-importance."
He keeps going:
But Schilling mostly resembled Burgundy in that he was a first-rate blowhard, thrilled to hold forth with presumed authority on nearly any subject, as if earth was desperate for his wisdom. He'd shamelessly careen from sports to religion to politics; from his conservative heroes (John McCain, George W. Bush) to The New York Times ("A 'left wing' mouthpiece that has never had issues reporting 'facts' that aren't, as facts.") to Obama's campaign trail economic plan ("There is nothing he's proposed that is going to help me hire new employees or maintain the best health care coverage"). In baseball, he had zero compunction about criticizing others in the game. He called Alex Rodriguez "bush league." He chastised Barry Bonds for "cheating on his wife, cheating on his taxes, and cheating on the game." He even called out his own ex-teammates, like the flopsy outfielder Manny Ramirez. When Roger Clemens--Schilling's version of Burgundy nemesis Wes Mantooth--was implicated for steroid use, Schilling howled that if Clemens was proven guilty, he should return his Cy Young Awards.
As gifted a player as Schilling was, his bloviating didn't always endear him to his teammates. You can imagine, just like on the Channel 4 news team, some laughing behind his back. Schilling picked up the nickname "Red Light Curt" for his tendency to seek out media attention, and his former GM in Philadelphia, Ed Wade, once quipped that Schilling was a "horse" every fifth day, and a "horse's ass" the other four. (That could have been a line in Anchorman, too.) GQ reported that after Schilling wrote an open letter to America after 9/11, his teammates serenaded him with a chorus of "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
It's hard to argue with these fine points (and many more in the story), though the disturbing part is that baseball writers weren't able to see it first. It's kind of like the steroids era in that sense... another whiff for Schilling.