Curt Schilling: I was completing Brother Anton’s quest in Desolace the other night with Throgmorton Gnicefloe, my trusty Gnomish mage (30/21 Frost Arcane build!), when I got thinking about zombies.

Zombies are awesome.

And as I cast a Rank 5 Improved Frostbolt in order to defeat the eighth Ravager and earn the Flax Gloves, I wondered how zombies would translate to the baseball field. When I’m not telling my teammates about politics, I love debating baseball history – could old-timers beat modern All-Stars? Better yet, could a team of reanimated zombies from baseball’s golden age defeat a team of modern zombies in a standard nine-inning game?

Just then my old buddy Doug Glanville snuck up behind me and kicked my ass in an unexpected ambush. He was playing as Gr’onk Phlagarng, a Horde rogue, and he’d caught me napping. Dammit! I hate to lose, but he’d totally jacked up his subtlety talents to lay in the pain. Later on, we were Skypeing, and I asked him what he thought of the zombie question – and who would he put on his teams?

Doug Glanville: Well, Curt, the real issue is whether you’re talking about the traditional folkloric zombie of the theist-animist Voodoo religions of Haiti or the latter-day fictional construct of the zombie as popularized by the films of George Romero. If it’s the former, then I suppose that an all-zombie baseball team could play quite well; you’d have to name a houngan as manager, which might cut down on your strategic possibilities a little bit, but since the zombies would only respond to the will of the zombie-master, not even Tony La Russa could do a better job managing them to victory.

But if it’s the latter, things start to get a little more interesting. Modern zombies’ allegiance to their reanimator is superseded by their insatiable desire for brains; you could potentially have a couple of loose cannons on that team, and we both know what a one-man guy like Milton Bradley can do for team morale!

Curt Schilling: Point taken, Doug! There’s also the issue of the “zombie plague,” by which these zombies would naturally be afflicted; the game at hand would probably be abandoned at various points as the zombies staggered into the stands to quench their all-encompassing thirst for flesh. I’m not sure how we’d deal with that.

Doug Glanville: Well, you’d have to station some paladins and necromancers in the crowd as security guards. You can never be too prepared, after all. Arming the fans with shotguns, staves, or truncheons would probably help; we both know that severe head injury or removal of the spinal cord is the only way to fully incapacitate a member of the wandering undead, and I guess we’d have to trust the fans to take matters into their own hands if Zombie Walter Johnson decided that he wanted a snack. And this brings up an interesting point – who would you want to see on your Zombie All-Star Team? I’m thinking that the very nature of necrosis eliminates players like Zombie Pete Gray or Zombie “Three Finger” Brown; you hate to see zombies lose limbs out there, but it’s a fact of life. Better to start with a full complement of appendages if possible; sorry, Zombie Jim Abbott!

Curt Schilling: Absolutely, Doug. If we’re talking about zombies, it’s got to be all about durability. My picks would have to be Zombie Carlos Beltran and Zombie Mike Cameron for sure; if they showed me anything in that crash last week, it’s that they’ve got exactly the right strength to survive attempted decapitations and bludgeonings as they stagger aimlessly about in the afterlife. Not to mention that they’d have pretty good foot speed for zombies!

Doug Glanville: Ditto for Zombie Pete Rose and Zombie Ray Fosse. But you know as well as I do that pitching wins ball games; therefore, I’d have to give credit to Zombie Cy Young and Zombie Pud Galvin, the all-time leaders in innings pitched. Players worked so much harder in those days that they’d easily defeat a modern team. You’ve got to have pitchers out there whose arms aren’t going to fall off. It’s that simple.

Curt Schilling: Sure, but I think the modern players would have a real advantage – with these newfangled ballparks and advances in technology, the old-timers wouldn’t have a chance. Not to mention that there are guys out there like Clemens, Franco, and Zombie Buddy Groom who might as well be undead already! I’m as traditional as they come, but I’d hate to see Zombie Barry Bonds stand in there against some junkballer. Just as long as he’s off the embalming fluid!

Doug Glanville: Fair enough. And although I’d love to think that a strict disciplinarian like Larry Bowa could effectively marshal his legions of the undead, I have to think that the volatile nature of zombies makes them likely to rise up and form an army of the night to crush a stern taskmaster like Bowa. The last thing you want is a zombie insurrection, after all. Therefore, I have to nominate our own Terry Francona to be the beastmaster; Terry knows that zombies are zombies, just like Manny is Manny, and if there’s anybody who knows how to control 25 egos, it’s Tito.