Red Socks

Can a celebrity Republican candidate break the Democratic hold on Massachusetts politics, the way Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California?

There is talk of former professional baseball pitcher Curt Schilling entering the Republican primary for the special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate.

We in the Philadelphia area remember Schilling from his time with the Phillies, between 1992 and 2000. He got one victory in an unsuccessful attempt to help that team win the 1993 World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Schilling's World Series rings came later, in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and in 2004 and 2007 with the Boston Red Sox.

During his post-season appearances in 2004, one of Schilling's socks was stained by blood from a hasty repair of an ankle tendon. That gave new meaning to the name "Red Sox".

Can he perform a similar dye job on Massachusetts, turning it into a red state?

UPDATE: Chris Cillizza, in The Fix blog on The Washington Post's website, gives us a jock-free list of potential candidates. I suppose that, like other members of his family, Joe Kennedy has at least played touch football, but that doesn't put him in the same jock category as Schilling.