Seriously: New Hampshire chooses Curt Schilling for pre-race prayer

New Hampshire Motor Speedway has picked a former Boston Red Sox pitcher to deliver the pre-race prayer on Sunday.

And not only has the speedway picked a former Red Sox pitcher, it has chosen a controversial one. Curt Schilling. Yes. Really.

"It will be a tremendous honor to step onto that stage, in front of a sea of NASCAR fans, and give the invocation with the hopes of an exciting yet safe race in New Hampshire," Schilling said in a track statement. "I have so many fond memories of playing in front of Boston fans, New England fans. They're some of the best in the world and I look forward to standing in front of them once again."

All was not well in Schilling's career earlier this year. The ESPN analyst was removed from his duties at Sunday Night Baseball for the rest of the season after he posted an image to Twitter that mentioned both Islam and Nazis and featured a picture of Hitler. He ended up deleting the tweet.

Sigh pic.twitter.com/s1Zjab4W7z

— Nick Bromberg (@NickBromberg) August 25, 2015

Schilling hasn't been shy about his personal beliefs throughout both his baseball and broadcasting career. But it's easy to see how the image was, at best, a bad thing to tweet. At worst, it was seen as a comparison between a religion and set of beliefs.

ESPN immediately called the tweet unacceptable and Schilling was suspended from his duties on the Little League World Series. He was suspended from Sunday Night Baseball a week later.

Had the track picked, say, Tim Wakefield, then the decision to honor former Red Sox pitchers is inoffensive, and perhaps most importantly, not noteworthy. The track knew it would get attention for its choice of Schilling. But is that attention worth it given Schilling's recent history?

It's not. New Hampshire could have, and should have done better. Pre-race prayers should not have any connotations of religious preference or superiority. And a Facebook account that Deadspin said is Schilling's also shared this post about the Confederate flag in August. NASCAR previously asked fans to refrain from displaying the flag at races.

But the track is also no stranger to negative attention. General manager Jerry Gappens pled guilty to lewdness in a parking lot encounter with a 19-year-old female in January. He kept his job after he was suspended and the president of Speedway Motorsports Inc., the company that owns NHMS, said SMI was extending forgiveness and prayers for him and his family.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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