Curt-Schilling: 2004 Pitcher of the Year

Baseball Digest, Jan-Feb, 2005 by Tony Massarotti

FROM THE MOMENT HE ARRIVED IN Boston, the goal was simple: win. Rewrite history. Prove, once and for all, that winning a championship is about drive and determination and defiance.

Even Curt Schilling was willing to put his money where his mouth is, and that's saying something.

Acquired November 28, 2003, in a trade that sent pitchers Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon and Jorge de la Rosa and outfielder Michael Goss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Schilling came to Boston only after the Red Sox extended his contract by two years, through the 2006 season. It was the fine print in the contract, however, that identified Schilling's reason for coming to Boston and the team's reason for bringing him here. The fine print read:

If the club wins the World Series in 2004, the player's salary will increase by $2 million in 2005.

If the club wins the World Series, the player's contract will be extended by an additional year, through 2007, at a salary of $13 million.

All of that proved only additional incentive for Schilling, who arrived at spring training intent on earning his money. While offering his opinions on anything and everything--Schilling earned a verbal slap from Major League Baseball after a wild pitch for third-party steroid testing, which already existed--the right-hander also treated spring training like boot camp, grinding his way through the exhibition season to prepare for the rigors of the regular season.

By the time the games started for real, he was raring to go.

"Once the season starts, pitch count is much less an issue for me than it is for other people," Schilling said. "Honest to God, I count on one hand the number of times in my career where I've said, 'I'm done, I'm spent,' and most of the time it's been when the weather has been hot and I'm pitching on turf, or something like that.

"Everything I do in my spring training regimen, none of it is original Curt Schilling material. It's all a conglomeration of a lot of people's input. Like everything else, you take what works for you and use it. The other stuff, you let it go."

And you move on.

During the regular season, there was no overstating Schilling's importance to the Red Sox.

The Sox were 15-6 in April, but they sleepwalked through May, June, July and part of August. From May 1-August 1, the Red Sox were 43-43 in a span of 86 games, an astonishingly mediocre performance for a team with a $130 million payroll. second in baseball only to the New York Yankees.

As much as Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz or Keith Foulke, Schilling was responsible for keeping the Red Sox in contention for the postseason.

Nonetheless, it was August when Schilling's greatest value to the Red Sox became evident, when he officially overtook Pedro Martinez as the staff ace. During the final two months of the regular season, Schilling was 9-1 and won his last eight decisions. Time after time, he won after a Red Sox loss. And while the Red Sox fell short of the New York Yankees in the American League East, the team qualified for the playoffs and finished with the third-best record in baseball, 98-64.

In Schilling's 31 starts, the Red Sox were 24-7. And after Schilling bulled his way through spring training as if those games actually meant something, the method to his business became even clearer.

If you make the practices hard, the games seem easy.

"In spring training, the day he pitches, it's the World Series, but that's the way he's found success," said Sox manager Terry Francona, who also managed Schilling in Philadelphia. "I don't know if he can do it any other way."

Said Schilling: "If I get the chance to pitch in Game 7 of the World Series, that's going to go exactly as the first game of spring training went."

Schilling never got to pitch Game 7 of the World Series, but he was in line to pitch Game 6.

As it turned out, the Red Sox didn't need him to do that, either.

In October, it became all about The Ankle. Though Schilling pitched much of the season with a problem in his right ankle that required off-season surgery, he suffered another ailment late in the regular season.

The problem worsened during his Game 1 win against the Anaheim Angels in the American League Division Series, contributing to an uncharacteristically poor performance against the Yankees in Game 1 of the ALCS.

By then, even Schilling was pessimistic.

"If I can't go out there with something better than I had (in Game 1), I'm not going back out there," Schilling said. "This isn't about me. It's about winning a world championship. If I can't do better than I did (in Game 1), I won't take the ball again."

For a time, it looked as if Schilling wouldn't get the chance. The Red Sox also lost Games 2 and 3 of the ALCS, placing themselves in a 3-0 deficit against the hated Yankees, the most decorated franchise in professional sports.

The Sox subsequently announced Schilling would be unavailable for Game 5, though of greater concern was whether there would be a Game 5 at all.

Then, after the Sox consulted with specialist George Theodore of Mass General Hospital, Sox team doctor Bill Morgan came up with the radical concept of placing sutures in Schilling's right ankle to stabilize a dislocated tendon.