Curt Schilling: A Tribute to a Retiring Great

I frequently speak to my family at dinner about always trying to do the right thing.

We talk about always trying to live up to the standards we set for ourselves. We try—though we don't always succeed—to be kind, courteous and thoughtful.

I'm proud of my family.

We don't park in handicapped spaces. We still hold open doors for people. We think of our fellow man.

We usually try to be politically correct in a land where political correctness is usually not politically correct.

Today, Curt Schilling announced his retirement after 23 years as a major league pitcher, most recently with "our" Boston Red Sox.

I've never had the pleasure of meeting Curt or had my dream come true of breaking bread with the Schillings.

But I will bet my left arm, that the conversations that occur around the Schilling table are very similar to the ones I just shared with you.

I speak to my family about "repetitive habits." Once you know a person's repetitive habits, you can predict the future.

Curt Schilling's repetitive habit is always doing what's right. So it came as no surprise to me that he announced his retirement from baseball on his WEEI.com blog, 38 Pitches.

You know Schilling. He was the one that stitched his leg together to pitch for his team in the 2004 playoffs.

His ankle looked like it had been gnawed on by my dog, Fenway. It was gnarled and torn pieces of flesh that were held together by staples.

The surgery had to be attempted on human cadavors before being tried on Schilling to see if it would work.

Critics claim the sock was actually covered in ketchup in an attempt to motviate teammates with his heroics.

Heroes don't cheat to motivate—they simply play injured.

His bloody sock sits in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. His World Series ring rests on his right hand. Second finger over.

Probably next to the other two he won.

Of course, that World Series victory came after an 86-year Boston drought, and on the heals of the now famous New York Yankee choke of 2004.

When he signed with the Red Sox in 2003—after a Thanksgiving Day meal with Red Sox officials—Schilling adored himself to the Bahston accent and Bahston fans in this famous Dunkin' Donuts ad.

Upon Schilling's arrival in Boston, he took shots at the "Evil Empire" and all but predicted the end of the vaunted Curse of the Bambino and the stranglehold that the Yankees had on the Boston nine.

During his five-year tenure with the Sox, Schilling ripped Boston nemesis Manny Ramirez on several occasions for not giving his all, saying his "level of disrespect to teammates and people was unfathomable."

He later shared his disgust with radio station WEEI's Glenn Ordway and former Sox players Brian Daubach and Lou Merloni after Manny had dissed him and his teammates upon his arrival in Los Angeles last year.

"The guy got to dress in a locker away from the team for seven years," Schilling said. "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."

Schilling also mixed it up with Fox News 25 Sports anchor Butch Stearns back in 2004, after Stearns claimed that Schilling had "issues" with former Sox hurler, Pedro Martinez.

Schilling called Stearns from his car while Stearns was a guest on station WEEI in September, 2004. The conversation went as follows:

Glenn Ordway (host of WEEI): Next we have Curt in the car up next here on the Big Show.

Schilling: How you doin' guys? Hey listen, I'm not going to be long but I'm gonna say one thing. I don't know who it was that just said something regarding Pedro and I.

Butch: That was Butch Stearns...That was me, Curt.

Curt: Don't be stupid enough to think you can make something out of nothing. That's how dumb, idiotic rumors get started by those who don't know the game. I have (well we're glad you called...) I have nothing but the utmost respect for Pedro. I think he's probably one of the best pitchers I've ever pitched with. He's a great guy. We get along awesome. Because you don't see us playing grab-ass on the field doesn't mean a thing. Don't say something stupid and something ignorant like that.

Butch: Alright Curt, I understand, and I'll apologize for that, but can I ask you a question?

Curt: No. Here's my problem. If I don't call up, you don't apologize for it, you don't retract it, and somebody calls and you make it a bigger deal than it is.

Butch: I'm not trying to make it...

Curt: It's a stupid, idiotic comment to make. It's irresponsible. And you know what? It's ignorant, because you don't know. Obviously, you just made it up.

Butch: I didn't make anything up.

Curt: Sure you did. Sure you did. I've hugged Pedro on the field this year, after we've won a game. That's a stupid thing to say...Isn't there some other controversy you can go to? Because you had some valid points, but don't make up stupid stuff.

Butch: Alright, fair enough Curt. Can I ask you a question? What do you care to offer us about your relationship with Pedro? That's all.

Curt: But...how...I love him. Pedro's an awesome guy. And he's arguably one of the best pitchers I've ever pitched with. He's a fantastic human being.

Butch: Do you feel like you guys have pushed each other in a good way, for the good of the team?

Curt: I don't know if we push each other, I've learned a ton from watching the guy pitch this year. A ton.

Butch: Same or different than relationship with Randy as players?

Curt: No, it's different because RJ and I lived right down the street from each other. We both have four kids. Our wives are very close. So there's a lot of different...It was different. As teammates and as friends, Pedro has my utmost respect and he's a guy I'd kill for, absolutely."

Steve Burton: Hey Curt, in all fairness to Butch, I'm the one who brought up the subject and what I said was 'how do you think...Pedro's used to being the ace of the staff. Here you come in...

Curt: No, no you didn't preface it with that, you just said “how do you think Pedro feels when Schilling pitches well?”

Steve: Right, and I think that's a fair question. I think...

Curt: Wait, wait, wait. Why is that a fair question? Because in that situation you'd be jealous? Given a similar situation, you'd have problems with it?

Steve: I think some people would, yes. I think that's a very fair question.

Curt: You're assuming Pedro is “some people.” Pedro is not “some people.” Pedro's one of the five best people on the planet at what he does. People like that tick differently than people like you. You have to. The top five in the world at anything, they do and they're going to be so vastly different people than you are, or that most normal people are. Yeah, they're human. They have emotions, but you know what? You get here doing things differently than most people do. I gotta go guys, I just wanted to make sure that people understood that that's not a top subject.

In an era where we beg for players to be passionate about their sports, protective of their teammates, and passionate about what they believe to be right, this is another example of Schilling donning his Superman cape and standing up for what he believes to be just.

He is the proverbial poster child for doing what simply feels right.

Schilling also appeared before the House Judiciary committee with Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Raphael Palmiero, and Mark McGuire, speaking vehemently against the use of HGH and steroids in the game that he loves so deeply.

I don't think more needs to be said on this topic.

Schilling and his wife, Shonda, contribute endless hours and boundless energy to Curt's Pitch for ALS in an attempt to stamp out the disease that took the life of Yankee great Lou Gehrig.

Shonda is also founder of SHADE, The Curt and Shonda Schilling Melanoma Foundation of America. Shonda had a very public battle with malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.

She launched The SHADE Foundation in 2002 to promote sun-safety awareness.

Does it get any more right than that?

Politically, Schilling is a staunch Republican and though he and I couldn't be more opposite on that, he stands up for what he believes is right, as opposed to sticking his head in the sand like so many fellow role models do.

On a personal note, when I was laid off in November after a lifetime as a warehouse and logistics manager, I sent e-mails to all the friends in my AOL address book.

Schilling does not know me from Adam, but within hours, I got a personal e-mail from him telling me that he can't guarantee anything but he would forward my resume to the HR manager of his company, 38pitches.com.

His HR person, Aurelia Laff, sent me several e-mails wishing me well in my period of unemployment (they obviously didn't have anything for me).

I also watch the way the Schillings use their Facebook pages. There is nothing fake or choreographed. Their pages are open, sincere and genuine (don't try to friend him..he has reached the Facebook limit of friends and is advocating a change in Facebook's policy).

So when Schilling announced his retirement today instead of pulling a late season entry into the pennant race (a la Clemens), it came as no surprise to me.

Rather than disgrace the game he loves by pitching in a diminished role, rather than spend yet another season away from his wife and children, Gehrig and Gabby, Curt has decided to hang up the glove, the cleats, and the bloody sock.

And as opposed to pulling Brett Favre-like antics of “retire today and sign tomorrow,” I believe that Curt is sincere in his announcement.

Been there, done that. Time to hang 'em up.

Somehow, I expect him to jump in the saddle of his white horse and travel into the sunset.

So Curt...One last time...This one's for you!

Writer Takes The Road Less Traveled

In the mid 1990's, I started a feel-good magazine called Country Essence. I was fed up with the rapes and robberies and murders we are all subjected to on a daily basis fueled not only by the media's need to gain viewership but also by our own sadistic need to know.

We drive by car accidents and rubber-neck in hopes of seeing a mutilated body. We watch the show Cops in hopes of seeing someone who is more messed up than anyone we've ever seen. We are glued to the CBS Nightly News in hopes of feeling just a little worse about our lot in life than we already do. In short, we become part of the problem and not part of the solution.

As a writer, I have a choice.

I can choose to write a juicy story about Manny being Manny, or A-Rod shooting himself up, or Plaxico shooting himself down. My goal, I guess, is not to truly fix the broken world but to score reads and comments.

As you all know, we write strictly for the love of writing or perhaps to be discovered. We write to climb up the rankings and to hopefully see our story or, better than that, our own picture perched atop the unofficial writer's rankings.

Been there. Done that.

It's cool, but it's not why I choose to write.

Like Country Essence, Bleacher Report can be our own personal platform for (yes, that word you're all sick of) CHANGE.

I've now written 35 stories. I've written a half dozen or so that make me feel good and 29 that make me part of the problem. My victories were stories written about my son, my love of the sport of baseball, my loss of my job, my family, and the mentoring I received from a friend who has since passed on.

I've written about the personal achievement of the Italian National Baseball Team and the friendships that the teammates have forged. They made me feel good and I sense the readers have left feeling the same.

So, effective now, I have made a choice. I've made a choice to dare to be different. I can march to the beat of a different drum instead of cruising down the path of negativity. Walk the high road instead of crawling along the road of slander, drivel, and libel.

This idea actually entered my thoughts after I wrote A-Rod Isn't My Hero, My Son is My Hero. My fear was that I'd become predictable. I'd become a cream puff writer. People would start to say, "Oh, more of the same." If I am truly as strong a writer as I profess to be, I'll bet I can remain interesting.

It's so funny how we are so concerned about being repetitively good, instead of caring that we are repetitively bad. Messed up, huh?

A man was walking along a beach. The tide was high. He saw another man, ankle deep in starfish. As each wave would come in, more and more starfish would be beached on the shore.

One by one, the man would reach down into the cold surf and pick up a starfish. A starfish that was doomed to die. He'd throw them into the surf, only to see the majority of them float back onto shore. Occasionally, he would witness one make it over the top of the next approaching wave.

The first man said to the second, "What are you doing? Can't you see that your effort doesn't make a difference?"

The second man bent down and picked up another starfish. He threw it into the ocean. He looked at the other man and said, "Made a difference to that one, didn't it?"

I've chosen to be that man.

When Team Italia Ruled the World

The World Baseball Classic seems to be trudging into the championship rounds with a mixed level of enthusiasm. This week, teams from Puerto Rico, USA, Mexico, Cuba, Japan, Korea, Venezuela, and the Netherlands stagger to the finish line playing before thousands of fans disguised as empty seats.

Stories about the classic are all too abundant as writers speak of the event's unpopularity, while MLB officials try to spin the event as a rousing success in bringing a global sport to the globe.

As I watch the games, I admit, that I have not watched a single inning thinking about the event from a National perspective. I couldn’t care less. But I do continue to think about what it must mean to the players themselves. Not the MLB players, but the Dutch and the Italian, and even the Korean and Cuban players. Players who rarely get to play on the World Stage.

As a little leaguer, I never viewed myself as playing for Spencer, MA or for Williamsport, PA. I thought of my glove, my teammates, my turn at bat, my bubble gum, my mom and dad watching me from the stands.

Watching the Classic, has truly stirred up my own inner emotions. I think of Tommy Gregory and Jimmy Grady, the slick double play combination of my Little League team. I think of the sport itself, not of the event.

The flowing of my emotions caused me to pick up the phone and call my friend, Ken Germano. Ken is the principal owner of Wellness Fitness Consultants and past president of the American Council on Exercise. A finer human being you will never meet.

But there’s a side of Ken that not many know. Ken was an integral part of first European Champion Italian Baseball Team in the mid 1970’s. He played with heroes of Italian baseball like Hall-of-Fame catcher, Giorgio Castelli. He forged life long friendships with Ed Orrizzi and Mike Romano when he played in Rimini, Italy in 2004.

Most importantly he played for the country of his ancestors and the country that he still thinks of lovingly as home.

I called Ken, needing to pick his brain. I needed to feel the love of the sport and the love of his country. It exploded through the phone wires. Ken’s zest for life, his passion for the sport and his love for Italy poured through the wires.

“This recent WBC has really stirred up memories, Todd. It kind of validated what we did over there 35 years ago."

"We were the building blocks and keystones for generations to follow in the game“ said Germano who tried out for the Chicago Cubs in the late 1970’s.

“I was really pleased and proud to find everything so well archived on the FIB site as it had not been previously there over the last 10 years."

“If you go to www.fibs.it, you will arrive at “Il Federazioni del Baseball’ e Softball Italia“. Click on “La Storia Della Nazionale. It lists all Italian International Players including my teammates and me from the first European Championship team."

I could feel Ken’s enthusiasm as he talked of his historic team from the towns and villages of Italia.

“It tells the entire story of Italian baseball in Italian. Somehow reading the history of baseball itself in the language of my heritage makes it feel so warm. It makes the sport come to life."

“We were the first to defeat the Netherlands. I remember it as if it were yesterday, and yet it was almost 35 years ago. I can name each on of my teammates, my brothers and can visualize what they looked like when we walked into the Olympic Stadium in 1976 to play as an exhibition sport in Montreal. We looked slick in our Italian suits and hats. The crowd cheered for us, louder than anything I’ve ever heard."

Germano went on to tell me the history of the sport in Italy.

“Italian baseball started by an American Irish Soldier named Horace McGarrity on the beaches of Anzio where I had the honor of playing in 1975 for the champion Nettuno baseball club. That is where the American War Cemetery is located for WWII heroes and where I also had the privilege and honor of meeting with General Mark Clark when he was still alive."

I asked my “amico” about the television coverage of the event and how he felt about the future of the WBC and Global Baseball.

“The TV coverage has been great, but there is so much that ESPN and MLB network are missing on the little teams, e.g. Italy and Netherlands.”

"Its been interesting listening to Bruce Sutter announce the World Baseball Classic games while watching Italy versus Venezuela. He was speaking of fellow countryman, Mike Piazza, and the Italian Baseball Federation. How the global reach of the game is now getting there and the need for resources and money."

"I feel that the insertion of US Major League Baseball players into International play is needed to make the sport and the event flourish. Wouldn't it be superb for MLB like Major League Soccer to loan players, good minor leaguers, high A, AA+ to these leagues during their season to help them build and promote a global game?"

"These players would also get to see the world and learn a new language. Talk about an experience." "But. MLB doesn't seem to be thinking like this and if they are, they are not saying. It's not rocket science, it just needs resources and the right audience to get done. MLB should hire us to do this, we have the credentials!"

"As baseball Italia and ESPN's Bruce Sutters coverage of the team, Ken added, "It's been thriving there for decades. In Holland, for example, they can recruit many players from the Netherlands, Antilles, Sidney Ponson, Andruw Jones to name two."

"I can remember playing this tournament in Barcelona and the baseball was as good as it gets. Our ace Mike Romano, a Dennis Eckersley look alike, threw harder than Eck. We just didn't get the same looks when we got to the States."

Ken explained that the Italian team also worked for the Italian Olympic Federation /Baseball Federation and put on clinics and worked with kids all over Italy.

"The only American contingency having anything to remotely do with MLB to come over to Italy was Joe Garagiola with NBC when he had the show "The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola" aired before the game of the week with Tony Kubek, Bob Costas, and Jim Palmer. Of course Joe was Italian and grew up with Yogi on "The Hill" in St. Louis, but this was right in his wheel house to televise back to the States. He spent two days with us in Nettuno, Italy and our folks go to see us back home doing what we loved."

I asked Ken, who used to work out with Arnold Schwatzneger, what he thought of the escalating baseball salaries of 2009.

"I always dreamed of earning six figures playing baseball and I finally did."

He laughed and said, "Yup, I earned L600,000 per month, which was equal to $300 US in the early '70's. Six figures, at last. Playing ball, hmm?."

"Back in those years soccer was down and we were gaining momentum and playing in front of up to 10,000 in the right cities. We beat Olanda, the Netherlands, for the first time and European supremacy in baseball."

"I think MLB can do whatever they want, wherever they want if they are willing to invest the dollars to market and grow the game globally. The interesting thing though is before global coverage and the Internet, global baseball was going on and we were playing against the US, Japan, Korea, Canada, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, and England even had teams, as well as, West Germany."

"It was unreal for me to play on the same field with future Hall of Famer, Paul Molitor. We played against other US major leaguers, like Ron Hassey and Denny Walling who played for great Oakland and Houston teams in their day."

"What MLB has finally done with this tournament is shine a light on what has been here for many years. What the IBF, the International Baseball Federation in Indianapolis drove for all these years with a US National Team coached by great college coaches like Itchy Jones from Southern Illinois."

As our hour long conversation came to a close, my buddy climbed on his exercise soap box and had one more pitch for International Baseball and why the WBC may be more important than we are giving it credit for.

"It would be great to see MLB players get behind overall conditioning and fitness programs for kids. To help the nation combat inactivity and obesity. Kids in the coming decades will not outlive their parents if the data and statistics are correct. The incidence of juvenile type II diabetes on the rise and how can over 300,000 kids have arthritis already."

"Through these generic programs they could become specific in regards to their sport of choice. Programs have to effect the most versus the least at the school level where all kids have to be each day for 75 percent of each year."

I hung up the phone and sat back on the couch. I thought of Ken and his Italian buddies jumping up and down in the middle of a baseball diamond after "conquering Europe" for the first time.

And somehow, the WBC felt a little more important to me.