Crash Davis (advising Nuke LaLoosh): Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic.
— Bull Durham

Curt Schilling in a losing effort last night joined the prestigious 3000-strikeout club, becoming its fourteenth member. In the process he probably hit a big enough career number to earn, with the help of his two rings each with different teams, a plaque in Cooperstown.

Mind you, I don't know if I would rush to put the 206-win late bloomer in the Hall, but I think the baseball writers will.

He becomes the fourth active pitcher to strike out three thousand batters joining Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, and Greg Maddux. Pedro Martinez, who is awaiting Ernesto to leave Florida to start rehabbing, is just 14 Ks short of joining the club.

There haven't been five active 3000-K pitchers in almost twenty years. In 1987 five 3000-K pitchers—Bert Blyleven (3286), Don Sutton (3530), Nolan Ryan (4547), Phil Niekro (3342), and Steve Carlton (4131)—were active. By 1992, just (Ryan and Blyleven) were still active. From 1994 to 1997, there were no 3000-K pitchers in baseball.

Two years saw the highest number of active 3000-K members, six. The first was 1983 (Don Sutton, Fergie Jenkins, Gaylord Perry, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, and Tom Seaver) and the second was 1986 (with Tom Seaver joining the 1987 list above).

By the way, here's the first list of 300-K club members with soon-to-be anointed Martinez:

Unfortunately, there are not that many pitchers beyond Martinez who have a good shot of joining the club. The 39-year-old John Smoltz is next at 2743. Beyond that it looks like we are going to have as long a wait as we did after the waning mid-Eighties classes started to retire.

Here are the active pitchers who meet or exceed the strikeout totals for the average 300-K club member by the given pitcher's age. Note that this is based on the career totals through 2005, but I include the 2006 numbers. Two pitchers (Vazquez and Greinke) are falling short of the necessary totals in 2006, though Vazquez should catch up:

[By the way, about the title: I just wanted to work in the right's favorite buzzword of late. I always love to quote Rummy the Dummy.]