Baseball: ESPN pulls Schilling over Muslim "Nazi" tweet

Major League Baseball legend Curt Schilling was suspended by broadcaster ESPN on Tuesday after triggering uproar with a tweet that compared "extremist" Muslims to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

Schilling, 48, attempted to head off the controversy, hastily deleting the tweet soon after it was posted on his Twitter feed. The post depicted a graphic of Hitler with the message: "It's said only 5–10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?"  Schilling accompanied the tweet with his own message, reading: "The math is staggering when you get to the true #'s".

The post was deleted swiftly amid an online outcry.

ESPN said Schilling – who won three World Series titles as a pitcher with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Boston Red Sox – would be removed from the network's ongoing coverage of the Little League World Series. "Curt's tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company's perspective," the broadcaster said. "We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration."

Schilling has since apologised, saying on Twitter: "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."    (AFP)

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