Dan
Shaughnessy Sucks –
Well, it’s been twenty days since Dan Shaughnessy wrote about the Red Sox. C’mon! He’s
had BC basketball to write about! And they’re goin’ to the Final Four, baby!
Wooo! Oh wait..
Today, Danny bids a fond adieu to Curt
Schilling. Sweet young, Curt..
(Dan’s utter douchebaggery in bold,
my udder cowsuckery in plain.)
He Was Bloody Good Here
Oh, I get it! Because socks!
Curt
Schilling retired yesterday. Made it official on his blog, 38Pitches.com.
I wonder if he lives in his mom’s
basement! LOLLLL!!
It was a little confusing at
first. Websites, radio broadcasts, and television stations treated the
announcement as "breaking news,"
The media making a big deal out of
something Schilling says? WHAATTTT!!!?! Next thing,
you’ll tell me a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist will devote an
entire article to this announcement! What a world!
which seemed a little odd if you've been paying attention.
Haven’t.
I mean, would anybody consider
it breaking news if George McGovern announced he's not running for president in
2012?
Well, if he held a press
conference and everything; yeah, that would probably make the news.
Schilling
telling the world he's not going to pitch anymore is a little like Dick Van Dyke sending out
a press release to tell us he's done his last sitcom.
Because Curt
Schilling hasn’t pitched in fifty years.
Thanks for all the great shows,
Dick, but we pretty much knew you were done.
Did he just set up a Dick Van Dyke
reference simply so he could blast Van Dyke? Fuck you, Van Dyke!
I'm going to miss the big lug.
Van Dyke?
In the past 30 years in
Yeah, Larry Bird was boring as
shit.
And it's nice to know he's not
really going away. The uber-blowhard
I hear Dan Shaughnessy’s opening a
Pot & Kettle shop..
still will be part of our lives in cyberspace, on the
airwaves, and probably at every town meeting and polling place in
Middlesex. Hilarious. Shaughnessy’s on
fire!
There can be no argument about
Schilling's place in Red Sox lore. More than any other athlete in the history
of our community, he delivered on his promises.
Ted Williams. Larry Bird. Tom
Brady. Screw ‘em!
He came to town claiming he was
here to break an 86-year-old curse and he got it done.
Oh yeah, he did do that..
Immediately. Schilling went 21-6 in 2004, and then there was a
certain playoff game involving a bloody sock.
BLAHHH! HE FAKED IT!! IT WAS
TEMPER PAINTTTTTT!!!!
Schilling beat the Yankees,
then the Cardinals while bleeding into his sanitary hose.
Wow, sounds a lot less manly when
you call it that.
Stephen King should write a
book about it.
He did. And I still haven’t
finished it..
Even more remarkable is what
Schilling accomplished in the 2007 postseason, another World
Series winner. By October of '07, injuries, old age, and conditioning
complacency had diminished his skills. Still, Schilling could not be beaten in
the playoffs. Armed with nothing more than an Al Nipper fastball,
Nipper Power!
he beat the Angels, Indians, and
Powerhouses.
At the end, Schilling was able
to win on his smarts and his accuracy. He prepared better than any pitcher. To
the finish, he was a strike machine who could beat you with his brain even
after his shoulder gave out.
That’s just when his
brain-shoulder would kick in.
In a lot of ways, Schilling was
the Bill Russell of pitchers. In 19 postseason
starts with the Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox, Schilling went 11-2 with a
2.23 ERA. He was 4-0 in five "win-or-go-home" tournament games.
So if you win, you don’t get to go
home? Where do you sleep?
His teams played in 12 October
series, winning 10.
His accuracy may never be replicated.
It could be transmogrified,
though..
Among all major league pitchers
with at least 1,500 innings, Schilling has the best walk/strikeout ratio since
1900 (4.38 strikeouts per walk). Think about that for a second.
No!
Best ever since the beginning
of the 20th century.
We also share the same birthday,
which is pretty sweet..
He seemed destined to alter Red
Sox history. In 1985, while pitching for
JUCO!
Schilling was scouted by
How’d that open-heart surgery go,
jerk!
Schilling was a Red Sox
second-round pick in 1986, and in '88 he was traded to the Orioles, along with Brady Anderson,
And a barrel of
steroids, not to be opened for eight years.
for Mike Boddicker, who
helped deliver two division flags to
God Bless Mike Boddicker.
In
That bum?
He learned to compete against
the Yankees when he teamed with Randy Johnson to
end the
Very unpatriotic.
When the Sox acquired Schilling
in November of 2003, Curt said, "I guess I hate the Yankees now."
Logical.
For all of his championship
success and infinite charitable deeds,
Infinite? That doesn’t
seem very possible/feasible..
Schilling managed to be a
polarizing figure at every stop of his career.
In simpler
words, an asshole.
Some of it was politics, most
of it persona. He could never outrun the remark of his general manager in
Oh, Ed!
Things ended badly here.
Wait, they did?
Schill might be the only
athlete who could direct anger at a management team that paid him $8 million to
throw zero pitches in 2008. The Sox always will thank him for the rings, but
don't look for the club to stage a "Thanks, Curt" Day for 2009.
Yeah, that’s scheduled for 2010.
Listening to local commentators
yesterday, it was tempting to suggest we dispense with due process and whisk
Big Schill into
We could set up a religion based
solely around him.
Given his lights-out postseason
performance, Schilling compares favorably with Hall of Famers Don Drysdale and Catfish
Hunter, but he comes up shy of Bert Blyleven,
Because Bly had
a much sweeter beard.
Jack
Morris, and Luis Tiant, who thus far have been deemed not worthy.
Also, postseason numbers of the last couple of decades are diluted. Until last
year, Bernie Williams had more postseason homers
than anyone in baseball history (Manny Ramírez
went ahead of Bernie in '08). Rick Dempsey, Scott Brosius, and David
Eckstein were World Series MVPs.
But Eckstein is scrapppyyyyy!
The Schilling Hall debate could
rage for five, 10, or even 20 years.
Thirty, even!
Today is a day to cut through
the blogs, blurbs, blabs,
I’m going to throw two other
nonsense words in with ‘blog’ so it will seem like I’m being condescending
towards bloggers; even though I probably pore over every single one that
mentions my name..
*ahem* Lowposts.com
*ahem*
and political agendas and remember that Curt Schilling was
one heck of a major league pitcher, a guy who
wanted the ball when it mattered most. His last appearance in the majors was a
2-1 victory over
On top of Game Two..
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe
columnist. He can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com.
~~~
Well,
this one wasn’t quite as douchebaggy as I was hoping it was going to be.
Instead, Dan went with his other bag of tricks where he just writes about
something he’s written about already. For all I know, this article (without all
the retirement stuff) is a year old. And of course, he had to throw a zing or
two towards the blogs, as well.
Can’t wait for the ShaughnessyWorld.com blog to open in 2010 after the Globe
collapses. Come over to the Dark
Side, Dan. We’ll make fun of you less. (Not really..)