Posts tagged CurtSchilling at FanHouse

In the Playoff Pulse Series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

There's something fitting, or poetic, or maybe even perfect about Boston's season coming down to a start by Tim Wakefield. Putting your season in the hands of a knuckleball pitcher like Wakefield is a bit like betting a year's salary on black at the roulette table -- it's an awful lot to wage on just one thing, but the odds aren't all that bad.

Wakefield is unique -- the one true practicing knuckleballer with a regular gig in the major leagues right now. When he's on, you wish there were more pitchers around like him, but part of his success comes from the fact that he's a complete novelty. For all the talk about Jamie Moyer being a crafty, soft-tossing veteran, Wakefield has been around nearly as long as Moyer and he throws even softer.

He has arguably the best contract in baseball, a never-ending team option for $4 million a year. That's tremendous value for a back-of-the-rotation starting pitcher. Wakefield can be even more than that when the knuckler is fluttering in the wind. Of course, things can turn quickly on him if his signature pitch starts to rotate and flatten out. The 2003 ALCS is a perfect example -- ha baffled the Yankees in two starts and was on his way to being series MVP, and then Aaron Boone got a hold of one of the bad knuckleballs.

When Curt Schilling realized just how badly his shoulder was injured last winter, his surgeon, Dr. Craig Morgan, suggested he undergo surgery immediately. After having their medical staff look at him, the Red Sox disagreed, declaring that mere rehab would get him back on the field sooner.

In the end, Schilling was contractually bound to follow his team's orders, even though he disagreed with them. Ultimately, it was a bad call; rehab didn't work, and Schilling went under the knife in June. And on Wedneday, on the eve of Boston's appearance in the ALCS, Morgan had no problem reminding the Red Sox what they missed out on:

"If the (team) would have let me do the surgery in January, he'd probably be pitching in the playoffs now," Morgan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

To be fair, I'm guessing the real reason Morgan was talking to reporters was to give an update on Schilling's recovery -- his shoulder is said to be in "phenomenal" condition just three and a months after the operation -- but the timing of his comments just seems petty.

Most people on the payroll of the Boston Red Sox are focused on the Tampa Bay Rays and the ALCS right now but one guy is already thinking about 2009. Because of shoulder surgery, Curt Schilling hasn't been an on-field part of this playoff run but he's not ready to officially hang up the cleats and begin the clock on his Cooperstown candidacy just yet.

Schilling said that if his shoulder recovers, he'll tear himself away from campaign photo ops and give baseball one more try.

"If I do decide to come back, I would work to the point I was ready and somewhere around May 1 let the teams know I wanted to pitch the second half. I'd obviously need to spend June in the minor leagues building it all back up and then hopefully come back and help a team in contention win a World Series."

He's just like Roger Clemens without all that nasty steroid business.

If Schill does give it another go, it's hard to imagine it will happen with the Red Sox. They are set at the top of the rotation. With Justin Masterson, Clay Buchholz and other young guns in the system, there doesn't seem to be much room for a risky bet on a fading star. It's time for a change, in other words, which the politically minded Schilling may or may not appreciate.

Curt Schilling has opinions, and he's not afraid to share them ... over and over and over again. The morning of the trade deadline he plainly admitted on the radio that he hoped teammate Manny Ramirez would be sent packing. Days later, he celebrated Manny's trade to the Dodgers by piling on with an old story about how he and Manny almost got into a fight.

And on Wednesday, six weeks after a trade that by all accounts has worked out perfectly for both the Dodgers and the Red Sox, Schilling once again found time to unload on his former teammate, saying Manny's "level of disrespect to teammates and people was unfathomable." Chad Finn of the Boston Globe transcribed Schilling's appearance on WEEI:

"The guy got to dress in a locker away from the team for seven years," said Schilling, talking via telephone with Glenn Ordway and former Sox players Lou Merloni and Brian Daubach. "And then [when] he's on this crusade to get out of here, all of a sudden he's in the locker room every day, voicing his displeasure without even having to play the game that night."

Maybe Schilling has a point, but I find it ironic that a guy who, come to think of it, hasn't thrown a single pitch this year, is complaining about somebody else "voicing his displeasure without even having to play the game that night." No, his real injury and Manny's allegedly make-believe ailments aren't nearly the same thing, but still, his words would carry more weight were he actually contributing this year.

Curt Schilling may or may not be retiring. The former would mean less "schilling" (a new verbal use of the word which MLB FanHouse coined to mean 'blowing copious amounts of hot air') to the media, in theory. Although if today is any indication, maybe not.

See, Schill got on WEEI radio and waxed somewhat correctly about the state of sports in New York and Boston. And how people hate Tom Brady.

"People don't like [New England/Boston] anymore. The euphoria in New York is palpable. The Yankees suck this year, and they're bitter and mad and they're making excuses over that. Now they got Tom going down, so New York is excited."

I use "somewhat" because I don't think every New Yorker is excited to see Brady out for the season. In fact, I think at least like 15% of New Yorkers (legit ones, not transplanted Bostonians) would say they're sad to see the Golden Boy hurt.

However, Schilling is dead-on-b-accurate about the general public's feelings towards Boston. They're the new New York in terms of having winning teams whose fan base refuses to stop being generally obnoxious about their teams.

Oh and yes, the Yankees might not be "great" this year. But I don't know that there's a direct correlation between "no playoffs" and "wish for Tom Brady to get hurt."

Gracias to TBL for the quote

Curt Schilling may or may not be retiring. The former would mean less "schilling" (a new verbal use of the word which MLB FanHouse coined to mean 'blowing copious amounts of hot air') to the media, in theory. Although if today is any indication, maybe not.

See, Schill got on WEEI radio and waxed somewhat correctly about the state of sports in New York and Boston. And how people hate Tom Brady.

"People don't like [New England/Boston] anymore. The euphoria in New York is palpable. The Yankees suck this year, and they're bitter and mad and they're making excuses over that. Now they got Tom going down, so New York is excited."

I use "somewhat" because I don't think every New Yorker is excited to see Brady out for the season. In fact, I think at least like 15% of New Yorkers (legit ones, not transplanted Bostonians) would say they're sad to see the Golden Boy hurt.

However, Schilling is dead-on-b-accurate about the general public's feelings towards Boston. They're the new New York in terms of a winning team whose fan base refuses to stop being generally obnoxious about their team.

Oh and yes, the Yankees might not be "great" this year. But I don't know that there's a direct correlation between "no playoffs" and "wish for Tom Brady to get hurt."

Gracias to TBL for the quote

Later today, the Red Sox will stroll out of the visitor's dugout and face the Yankees for the final time at venerable Yankee Stadium. There will be other goodbyes to the House That Ruth Built in the coming weeks, but with the Bronx Bombers a major longshot to play into October, this series seems to have taken on special significance.

Here are a dozen of the finest moments in the best rivalry in American sports, all of which took place at Yankee Stadium. Even Red Sox fans have to be feeling a little nostalgic about their team's final visit. After all, the franchise's finest hour took place there.

1. Oct. 16, 2003: The ghosts strike one last time. After Red Sox manager Grady Little leaves Pedro Martinez in well past the 100-pitch mark with a 5-2 lead in the eighth inning, the Yankees rally to force extra innings. In the 11th, Aaron Boone sends a deep fly into the Bronx night, sending New York to the World Series and crushing Boston's dreams of ending the Curse of the Bambino again.

To fans and the media, what a team does in the MLB Draft pales next to a big free-agent signing or blockbuster trade.

Part of that is the gaudy figures thrown around during the hot stove season. The Red Sox, this year's top spender in the draft, couldn't even buy one year of Gil Meche if they shifted their draft outlay to the open market. Most of it stems from immediacy, though. A big winter signing answers the question who will help me today? A big haul in the draft answers who will help me tomorrow, but in most cases tomorrow is years away, if it ever comes at all.

Still, as the cost of free agents escalates, the draft continues to become the most important way to ensure long-term success. With that in mind, and with the deadline to sign picks in the books, here's a look at three teams who won and three teams who lost in the 2008 draft

Was Manny Ramirez's presence in Boston's clubhouse really a distraction? Curt Schilling thinks so. In an interview with Boston sports radio station WEEI this morning, Schilling held nothing back talking about his former teammate. From the Boston Globe:

"You kind of hope it didn't happen because it ends up being someone getting what they wanted after doing every possible thing ethically they could do wrong," Schilling said. "I was in that clubhouse after that and the change in atmosphere was palpable and I don't think you can put a price tag on that."

While unloading on his former teammate, Schilling also talked about an incident from 2005 in which he and Ramirez had to be separated by teammates after Schilling chided Ramirez for sitting out a game against the Devil Rays to avoid facing pitcher Seth McClung.

That the two teammates had a near dust-up isn't really news -- the incident was reported in the Boston Herald when it happened -- but it's still amusing that Schilling decided to bring it up now, three years after the fact. There's nothing classier than dressing down a guy after he's already left the building.

The most entertaining athletes are the most transparent ones, and no one makes information about their life and career available to the public than Curt Schilling does on 38pitches.com. Over the weekend, he took that transparency to a new level by actually posting pictures taken of his shoulder during his recent surgery (warning: a couple of the pictures are not for the squeamish) and giving everyone a detailed recap of what took place.

Schilling's trademark blowhardedness aside, I actually thought that the whole idea by Schilling to post those pictures was pretty cool. How many times have you wondered just what happened when a pitcher for your favorite team went under the knife? Who actually knew that labrums were all fluffy-looking? Med students, maybe. Baseball fans, not so much.

Of course, since Schilling's involved it's pretty clear that there's an ulterior motive. There was a lot of speculation about his latest injury (whether or not he knew about before re-signing with the Red Sox, whether or not he would ever pitch again), and Schilling uses the post to describe the injury, why it wasn't caught earlier, how it was fixed, and what that means for his future chances of pitching again.

Schilling's blog gives him a chance to give everyone (the fans, the media, teams he might pitch for in 2009) his side of the story without anyone trying to spin it. Why don't more professional athletes have blogs again?