Baseball Hall of Famer Curt Shilling deleted his Twitter on Wednesday after comparing NASCAR driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. to disgraced actor Jussie Smollett.
A crew member found what he said was a noose hanging in the garage at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday.
The “noose” was actually a garage door pull cord. Similar pull cords were hanging at every door in the Talladega garage.
NASCAR officials announced the finding of the “noose” to the public and called in the FBI, who sent 15 agents to Alabama to investigate the pull cord.
The FBI concluded there was no hate crime. The pull cord was in place in the garage since October 2019.
In a tweet on Wednesday, the former Boston Red Sox pitcher compared Wallace, 26, to 38-year-old Smollett, who was indicted in 2019 for staging a hate crime attack on himself.
“So we have @JussieSmollett v 2.0? Where is the media recanting their idiocy? Shilling tweeted. “It was all a lie.”
This isn’t the first time Shilling made a controversial statement on social media. He was fired by ESPN in 2016 for sharing an anti-transgender meme on his Facebook page.
Wallace thanked NASCAR and his team on Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s been an emotional few days. First off, I want to say how relieved I am that the investigation revealed that this wasn’t what we feared it was. I want to thank my team, NASCAR and the FBI for acting swiftly and treating this as a real threat. I think we’ll gladly take a little embarrassment over what the alternatives could have been. Make no mistake, though some will try, this should not distract from the show of unity we had on Monday, and the progress we’ve made as a sport to be a more welcoming environment for all.”
