| No Images? Click here   This week, Travis Waldron wrote about former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who went from the top of his sport to hosting a radio show for Breitbart. We asked Travis about the piece. What was the most surprising thing you learned while reporting this story? The depth of Schilling's political transition was surprising to me. I'd always liked Schilling as a pitcher, but I'd never really paid much attention to him off the field (with the exception of his near-Senate run in 2009) and to be honest, I sort of stopped thinking about him once he retired until he re-emerged over the last year or so as the political character he is now. So it sort of shocked me when I read his blog posts from the 2008 campaign where he seemed to have a bit of admiration for Barack Obama, even if he disagreed with him. What was the biggest challenge you faced while reporting, writing, or editing this story? How did you overcome it? The biggest was that he didn't want to talk to me for the story, which obviously changes how to go about it, and that a lot of people who'd once been closely associated with him -- whether through baseball or otherwise -- also didn't have much interest in talking. Getting around that just meant piecing together everything about him politically, and luckily his outspokenness made that easier. He had his blog, Twitter, radio interviews, Facebook, and then his own radio show. So I dug through his blog and social media accounts and listened to his show for awhile, just to almost create a timeline of his political "career." The second-biggest challenge, then, was having the confidence to actually trust my reading of all of that in place of a more traditional sit-down interview. Did you learn anything during the process that might help other writers and reporters? The trust part I mentioned above was something I tried to remind myself through it all -- as in, just because I hadn't talked to him didn't mean I hadn't done a bunch of other reporting and learned something about him that other people might not know, or have the time to know. I think I'd have probably had an easier time ironing it all out had I done a better job of trusting the ideas or beliefs I'd developed throughout that process from the beginning. That was something I learned and am trying to take away from it, anyway. If you had more time with Schilling, what would you have asked him? I'd love to know how close he was to actually running for the Senate seat in 2009, especially knowing what we know now about that race. It's not that hard to imagine -- given Martha Coakley's gaffes involving him and the Red Sox, and the general dynamics of that race -- him actually winning if he'd tried it, and I'd like to know how he thinks his life would be different if he did. And then there's the basic question about how he got so angry. Sure, his baseball career didn't end exactly how he wanted it to, and the business went bad, but he pitched until he was 40 and made a whole lot of money during an exceptional career. Probing him on how that leads to this sort of anger or disdain for the world (or the system) would have been interesting. And then I would have asked about those old debates in the locker room, with Gabe Kapler and other teammates, because that seems fascinating and potentially illuminating. I'd also ask him how he squares his current beliefs and words about immigrants (as well as Trump's approach to immigration issues) with his experience working and playing alongside so many immigrants -- Latinos and Hispanics especially -- in baseball. I find that aspect of his politics incredibly interesting. Anything else you want readers to keep in mind while reading this? It's interesting how strange this political moment is. It would have been so easy to write someone like Curt Schilling off as any sort of actual candidate had he undergone this sort of transition not long ago. I don't think he'll ever run for office. But now, it seems hard to write anyone off that way.       The three can't-miss must reads this week 
 Inside Turkey's purge
 White House adviser who opposes paid leave, equal pay now working on women's issues
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Sunday, April 16, 2017
How a famous pitcher went from Fenway to Breitbart
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