Schilling Hangs Up Bloody Sock

ESPN is reporting that Curt Schilling is retiring from Major League Baseball after 23 years of service. The veteran right hander has a career record of 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA with five teams, Baltimore, Houston, Philadelphia, Arizona & Boston. It’s the latter two teams that will forever be etched in Yankee fan’s hearts.

The Yankees have won an awful lot of regular season games over the last eight years. But the loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series started the downfall of the Yankees as a dominant postseason winner.

In that series, Curt Schilling pitched 3 games (3 starts) with a 1.69 ERA–26 K’s on 21.3 innings pitched. His effort in Game 7 is legendary, matching Roger Clemens pitch for pitch. He made just one mistake, and it actually wasn’t a bad pitch. A splitter that Alfonso Soriano belted to left and gave the Yankees a brief 2-1 lead. His overall effort throughout the entire series is the stuff that legends are made of. He completely dominated the Yankees, and prevented them from capturing their fourth Worlds Championship and fifth in six years.

In Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS, a literally bloody and battered Curt Schilling, pitching on a severly injured ankle, the same injury that contributed to a brutal Game 1 loss, shut down the Yankees through 7 innings, leaving the field with a, now notorius, bloody sock. Whether is was real blood or another substance, you cannot look past what he gave the Red Sox, as they drove another nail into the Yankees couffin.

Look, as a die-hard Yankee fan, I hate this man’s guts. No doubt about it. But, you can’t argue what he meant to the Red Sox since 2004. He’s a guy that I would have loved to see on the Yankees. We all love David Wells, but I don’t look at him the same after he jumped ship in Game 5 of the 2003 Word Series. After what Schilling did in 2004, basically pitching on one ankle, he showed his legend status. He is a big-game pitcher, a career 11-2 record in the post-season.

I don’t know if he’s a hall-0f-famer, but he’ll be in the conversation, there’s no doubting that. I’m glad we don’t have to face him anymore, but his presense is going to be missed when the Yanks battle Boston.

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