Curt Schilling
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Should be Hall of Famer Curt Schilling says the Tennessee Volunteers baseball team should start acting like they’ve been there before.
The former right-handed pitching great — who helped lead the Philadelphia Phillies to a World Series appearance in 1993, and won championships in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks and in 2004 and 2007 with the Boston Red Sox — took some time to give the team advice, exclusively on OutKick.
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“So this goes out to the Tennessee baseball team. First off, you guys are far too talented to be going home,” he said. “But let me give you a little piece of advice, as someone who played the game for a little while.”
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“When you act the way you act on the field, and you give every team in the country extra incentive to kick your ass, you generally don’t go all the way. That’s the way it works. The game’s hard enough,” Schilling said. “Acting like you’ve hit the biggest home run in the history of college baseball, every single time, it’s going to make people beat you. You guys should be going to College World Series. But when you give somebody else extra incentive to kick your ass, it generally tends to burn you — and you already are ranked No. 1. So you have everybody coming in to give you their best game. Now you’re going to give them an extra reason to beat you. It’s going to happen, guys. But just remember. Good luck next year, make it work.”
Watch everything Schilling had to say below:
Curt is 1000% correct here and it was the main reason I wanted to see this team lose so badly this year. I really love alot of the guys they have talent wise but when you act like a complete douche like Curt is pointing out everyone wants to kick your ass so much more and deservedly so. That attitude all comes from the Coach just letting the “boys be boys” which always has and always will be a total crock of shit.
Tennessee started buying into the “us against the world so we can act like turds” + “we’re the bad boys, rahr!” mentality. It wasn’t helpful and certainly not endearing. Granted I’m old school, but Schilling is right, new or old school, this flipping off people, cussing out umps, wild eyed screaming banshee strategy is simply not a winning strategy. I know Vitello ultimately wants to win, so adjust accordingly. Problem is, he’s set a precedent now, it’s going to be hard to unring that bell.
I doesn’t help that Outkick humps the leg of Vols baseball on a daily basis. The love letters this site puts out regrading anything Tennessee related is embarrassing.
Curt is right about this, and I wholeheartedly agree. That said, a team that won over 50 games and made it to a deciding game of a SuperRegional can’t really be called “hugely disappointing.” They had a heck of a year.
Thank you STKR!
As a huge UT fan, I agree with Schilling. The attitude probably had a lot to do with not letting up and losing so few games on the year. But…. Need to pull it in some. It’s ok to respect competitors.
I get his point, but this is all WAY overblown because of the Beck bird incident. The haters latched on to that .5 second moment like it was the entire summation of the baseball program like a bunch of angry snapping turtles. Let’s take it easy. What I’d argue back with Schilling is how do you know this team plays as well as they did WITHOUT playing with the edge they did all year? I think it was the secret sauce for them. You can’t ask them to play like Vandy. That works for Vandy. Different players and personalities. Swagger was their team identity, they bought into it, and it WORKED. To me it’s a bit like lecturing a biker gang about cursing, telling them to part their hair, wear more slacks, and then expect them to go kick somebody’s $&@.