There was a pretty interesting article on Curt in today's Globe. Here it is with my comments.
Curt Schilling is in pain, the worst of his 20 years in professional baseball.
<i><b>Oh no, I didn’t realize. Let’s hug it out. </b></i>
He hurts inside, as do his wife, Shonda, and their children who are old enough to sense his anguish.
<i><b>Let’s leave the kids out of this, it’s not about them, it’s about Curt and Shonda, both egotistical media loving narcissists. </b></i>
Less than a year after Schilling risked his career to help the Red Sox capture their first world championship in 86 years, he is plagued by the guilt and despair of failing to fulfill the expectations of his fans and teammates.
<i><b>Puh-lease. He is NOT “plagued” by guilt and despair, he is “plagued” by not being the center of attention. </b></i>
It also hurts that at least one teammate has suggested that Schilling has unfairly escaped the public wrath that other Sox players have endured for their disappointing performances.
<i><b>Johnny Damon. </b></i>
''Purely on a professional level, this year has been by far the hardest for me of my career," Schilling said. ''It has been very, very painful."
<i><b>Purely on a professional level, I would love to make a fraction of what you do. </b></i>
All the glory of last fall has not blunted the repercussions of a new season in which the Sox have gone from ''cowboys" and ''idiots" to injury-ravaged survivalists. After leading the major leagues last year with 24 victories, including three in the postseason, Schilling has been largely ineffective in coming back from complicated surgery to repair multiple ailments in his ankle. And he has spent much of the season trying to mask his sense of failure and futility.
<i><b>He is masking it? Someone should tell him that. </b></i>
''My heart is hurting because he's not the same person and I don't know how to help him," Shonda Schilling said yesterday from the family's home in Medfield. ''I don't ever remember feeling as happy for him as I feel badly for him now. It's a horrible feeling."
<i><b>So sad, so very very truly sad and troublesome. Poor Curty Smurty is hurting and Shonda can’t tell the press what she is doing to help him feel better. I can hardly write because tears are streaming onto my key board. People are looking at me because of my wailing and sobbing. God help these people, their lives are so hard. </b></i>
In his bleakest hour, Schilling indicated, he has imagined a better life after baseball.
<i><b>For a bleakest lifetime, most people imagined a better life PLAYING baseball. </b></i>
That moment came after a teammate, whom he declined to identify, complained that Schilling should have received more grief than he has from fans for underachieving.
<i><b>Johnny Damon. </b></i>
Schilling was stung.
<i><b>Imagine Schilling putting his hand across his heart “Huh? What? Me? Why such vicious attacks, why the hostility? I want to just spread love and my opinion about every topic to anyone who will listen.”</b></i>
''Somebody on this team wants me to get booed to make them feel better, and that really bothers me a lot," said Schilling, 38, who hopes to pitch two more years.
<i><b>Johnny Damon</b></i>
''Those are the kinds of things that really make me look at this game and understand that when I'm done in the game, I'll be done with the game."
<i><b>And makes me understand that you are a media whore, living WITH a media whore. </b></i>
Schilling said he suspected the same teammate gave an anonymous quote to the Herald last week in which he aired a similar gripe.
<i><b>Johnny Damon</b></i>
Citing the lack of a public backlash against Schilling for his subpar season -- the Sox ace is 7-8 with a 5.89 ERA -- the player was quoted as saying, ''When he comes into the game, people cheer him like he's the Pope? You think they'd let Pedro [Martinez] get away with this? Why does he get a free pass?"
<i><b>Why? Because 1) he thinks he is the Pope, or at least doing better work than the Pope. And 2) because he pitched with a career ending injury last year to win the first World Series in 85 years. That’s why Johnny. </b></i>
Schilling made no secret of his anger at the criticism, even if it came, as he suggested, from ''somebody who's not wired right."
<i><b>Johnny Damon</b></i>
''As much time as we spend together, you think you know someone," he said. ''But more times than not you find you really don't."
<i><b>I know one thing. Johnny Damon ain’t getting a Christmas card from the Schillings. </b></i>
A lightning rod for some critics because of his willingness to hold forth on a wide range of issues -- an uncommon trait among professional athletes -- Schilling has grown accustomed to the sniping. He remembers Ed Wade, his former general manager with the Phillies, once saying Schilling was ''a horse every fifth day and a horse's ass the other four."
<i><b>Ha, that’s a good one. Horse’s ass. I have to remember that. </b></i>
And he will never forget some other detractors, including Pedro Gomez, a former writer for the Arizona Republic, who chose the day Schilling started Game 7 of the 2001 World Series to describe him as ''a con man, someone more intent on polishing his personal image by whatever means possible."
<i><b>Why won’t he forget that comment? Truth baby, it hurts like a mother. </b></i>
Yet Schilling seemed to have found a comfort zone in Boston, where he will forever be revered for the personal sacrifice he made to deliver on his promise to end the franchise's championship drought.
''He paid a price for what he did last October," manager Terry Francona said. ''But if you're a fan, you cannot forget what this guy did last year for this organization. I never will."
<i><b>Now we are making some sense. Let’s get this straight. Curt shuns the Yankees and comes to Boston. Wins 24 games, gets hurt, has some crazy surgery so he can pitch in the playoffs, PITCHES with blood coming out of his ankle, wins the World Series for the first time since 1918, ends what is arguably the worse run in baseball. He could commit murder and this town would still love him. </b></i>
Still, Schilling increasingly has felt a sense of responsibility for the team's shortcomings. Had he pitched to his potential, he figures, he may have spared some of his teammates from the sourness they endured.
<i><b>Stop with this nonsense, it’s making me nauseous. The only reason Curt is upset about his shortcomings is because he is not the savoir again. It’s that simple. He could care less about sparing any of his teammates. </b></i>
He has seen Alan Embree and Mark Bellhorn all but booed out of town, for example, and Keith Foulke depart because of injury and ineffectiveness, even as the fans have generally stood by Schilling.
<i><b>Curt’s ego is so freakin huge that he feels that he could have saved Embree, Bellhorn and Foulke the rath of Red Sox Nation. No, he could not have. Those guys sucked despite what Curt thinks of himself. Embree and Bellhorn did it to themselves by not playing well and Foulke, well, he is a story for another time. </b></i>
''I've been given a long leash this year by the fans, which I'm very appreciative of," he said. ''But my teammates were just as responsible as I was for helping to win the World Series last year, and it has been really, really uncomfortable for me to see them go through what they have gone through this year."
<i><b>That is kind of a nice thing to say. Spread the credit for last year. Good call Curt, you’re softening up in my mind. </b></i>
His wife has never seen him so low.
''It's been hard in our house," Shonda said. ''It's been a long year, and it has affected our whole family."
<i><b>You want hard? Try being someone who lost all they have in New Orleans with no skill or trade to get a decent job. Try working for a living and supporting a family on 30 grand a year like some people. Try working 60 hours a week 52 weeks a year and barely scrape by. Be a firefighter and police man who risk their lives for pennies. Work in construction, or as a mechanic or deliver mail so that you can save up for 18 months and buy a new TV. No one wants to hear about how hard you have it, we all have problems and yours are minor compared to most. </b></i>
She wishes someone Schilling trusts would help him weather the storm. His father, Cliff, died in 1988, and he has no brothers.
<i><b>That is too bad. Losing a parent is tough regardless of who you are. </b></i>
''This is when we really feel the effects of Curt not having a father," Shonda said. ''He has no father figure to tell him it's OK, that he shouldn't feel disappointed, that he's doing the best he can."
<i><b>I will refrain from any sarcastic remarks in the name of good taste. </b></i>
The unkindest cuts, she said, have been the attacks on Schilling for reporting to spring training overweight and out of shape. Thirteen days after the Sox won the World Series, he underwent three hours of surgery on his right ankle to repair a dislocated and torn tendon, a bone defect, and cartilage damage, among other problems. He spent the next eight weeks at home in a wheelchair, other than when he used crutches for several public appearances. And by the time he broke free of the wheelchair, spring training was little more than four weeks away.
<i><b>This guy should have been able to come to training camp looking like Chris Farley and given a free pass. But I do question why he didn’t get a personal trainer to help him with stuff that doesn’t require him running or using that ankle. Just curious. </b></i>
''It angers me when people talk about how out of shape he was," Shonda said. ''It's not very fair to think that anybody who has been in a wheelchair for eight weeks would jump up and get fit in four. It's just not possible."
<i><b>It all comes back to you, Shonda, doesn’t it? How angry YOU were. </b></i>
Schilling acknowledged he weighed the most he had in his career -- he did not say how much -- when he arrived for spring training. He said he was physically unable to train hard enough to report in any better shape.
<i><b>Schilling, no need to explain yourself. You can spend your days drinking beer and eating sausage during the off season. Porky. </b></i>
''I should have realized then that I wouldn't be ready for Opening Day," he said. ''But I was trying so hard to shoot for it because of everything that had happened and because it was in New York and I would be facing RJ [Randy Johnson]. I made a huge, huge mistake trying to come back that early."
<i><b>RJ? Please refer to him as Randy, the Big Unit. </b></i>
By the end of April, he was 1-2 with an 8.51 ERA and wondering whether he would hurt the team more than help if he continued playing. Instead, he went on the disabled list and began the rehab work he missed before spring training.
<i><b>I love guys like this. They are the ones that quit a team or drop out of something and say “I am doing this for you, not for me. It’s not fair to you that I stay, I am only hurting the group.” But I do have to admit that I wanted him to continue pitching because every day he pitches is another half game closer the Yanks would get. </b></i>
''I could have shut down at the end of April, that was very clear to me," Schilling said. ''But my dad would have rolled over in his grave if I did something like that. I knew in my heart I wasn't done."
He returned to his training center in Arizona and was relegated to watching his teammates from afar, knowing how much they needed him.
<i><b>Not Johnny Damon. I don’t think he needed you, sweet boy. </b></i>
''He looked like a kid who has chicken pox," Shonda said, ''and has to sit at the window and watch everybody playing outside."
<i><b>Ha, good analogy. I like that one. Except his window is one of hundreds on a million dollar home. </b></i>
Still too weak to reclaim his starting role, Schilling volunteered to pitch out of the bullpen when he returned in July.
''Most people don't understand what a tall order it was to make that transition in the middle of the season when he wasn't even sure how he was doing physically," pitching coach Dave Wallace said. ''But he pretty much saved us, given the job he did with all we've gone through this year."
<i><b>Let’s temper the comments a little. He wasn’t that good. </b></i>
Even after Schilling returned to the rotation Sept. 5, more than two weeks passed before he felt he was close to regaining his form in a 15-2 victory last week at Tampa Bay. But the other feelings lingered, among them the pain of sensing he is the target of disappointment and resentment.
<i><b>First, it was a victory against Tampa Bay so let’s keep that in check. And I thought the point of this article was that he is NOT the target of disappointment and resentment, that Red Sox Nation has given him a pass. Did I miss something along the way?</b></i>
''They're not going to beat him down," Shonda said, ''but his spirit definitely is dampened."
Schilling's final start of the regular season is scheduled for Sunday, against the Yankees in the Fens. It could mark the most crucial regular-season game of his Sox career, but as much as he expects to relish the moment, he harbors no hope it will erase the pain.
<i><b>Ugh, stop with the ‘pain’ comments. Enough already. You live a charmed life that most of us working slobs were kill for. Sorry, but it is hard for me to feel sympathy for you right now. I need to buy a new dishwasher and am trying to figure out where to get the cash for it. I’ll make you a deal Curt, buy me the dishwasher and I’ll take some of your pain. </b></i>
''I'm trying as hard as I can to get back and be part of this thing this year," Schilling said. ''But, God willing, if we get into the postseason and do well and win again, it will still never be like last year. Nothing will be like last year."
<i><b>You mean nothing will be like walking to the mound with blood coming out of your leg and pitching the team to what most drunk and uneducated Red Sox fans will think of as the greatest event of their lives? Is that what you mean by your statement? That being the hero in one of the best, and definitely the most passionate, baseball towns in the country cannot be duplicated. Is that what you meant? Because if it is, I’m with ya big fella. Good luck on Sunday, I hope you feel the pain of losing. </b></i>