A pleased father recently came to Twitter to congratulate his daughter on her acceptance to college, where she will pitch for the softball team.
Then the trolls arrived and changed everything.
Unfortunately for the Trolls, the proud father was Curt Schilling, a retired World Series MVP and future Hall of Fame pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who would not let the Trolls win.
Schilling, a former Boston Red Sox pitcher who earned a World Series MVP award, wrote an innocent tweet congratulating his daughter on being admitted into Salve Regina College in Rhode Island, where she will follow in her father’s footsteps and throw for the Seahawks softball team.
“Congrats to Gabby Schilling who will pitch for the Salve Regina Seahawks next year!!” was Schilling tweet.
While many people joined him in congratulating his 17-year-old daughter on her acceptance to Rhode Island college, a handful took advantage of the occasion to hit on her, with some even posting obscene ᴠᴜʟɢᴀʀɪᴛɪᴇs directed at the young woman.
Schilling, however, was having none of it, and the proud father went into protective mode, stating, “As a father, besides providing for my family, what other job do I have? Loving my kids and protecting my family.”
Schilling used publicly accessible information to identify and remove at least nine of the worst trolls, resulting in job or athletic team terminations… “and we’re not done,” he continued.
“Lost in all of this is, my daughter is 17. She’s a minor. And these guys are all adults. I’m pursuing legal recourse on a couple of them because they broke the law. What they did can have them labeled as a se..x ᴏғғᴇɴᴅᴇʀ for the rest of their lives.”
The former pitcher and ESPN analyst also went on his personal blog, 38 Pitches, and launched a lengthy outraged tirade directed at the sᴇxᴜᴀʟʟʏ graphic trolls who had ᴀʙᴜsᴇᴅ his daughter.
Calling the men “gutless cowards,” he ᴄʀɪᴛɪᴄɪᴢᴇᴅ the fact that they hide behind their computers and smartphones and say things they would never say in person.
Schilling also stated that he was not interested in exacting personal vengeance, but rather in combating online bullying, which can drive some young people to despair and even ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ.
“This is not a pride thing, where it’s, ‘I’m going to show them.’ One of the defenses of people trying to defend these guys is, ‘You should know this is the world we live in now.’ And my response was, ‘No, it’s not. We can allow it to be that way, but it’s not.’ You want bad to be the norm, then do nothing,” Schilling said Monday night.
“Let me be very clear. I don’t know that I could put myself in a place where my daughter would take her life, but if that happened, I’m that father with nothing to lose. This was an attack on my family.
Hopefully, the message was sent loud and clear to all of the trolls out there on the Interwebs … You are not as anonymous as you think you might be.
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