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In the Starting Line-Up
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From the D & C show on WEEI from January 24th:
Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling spoke with Boston sports radio WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan this morning (Schilling will continue to join them each Tuesday during the season). Excerpts follow below:
Curt Schilling (approximately 7:40 am MST) outside of Phoenix by telephone: (Doing) good. I just dropped my kids off and am headed into API (Athletes Performance Institute in Tempe, Ariz.).
Curt Schilling and his wife, Shonda Schilling, dropped the ceremonial first puck at the Coyotes game on Sunday, Jan. 8 at Glendale Arena in Phoenix. (Phoenix Coyotes Photo / Norm Hall)
On the Steelers going to the Super Bowl
Gerry Callahan: I picture you in that Ben Roethlisberger jersey right now. You got the black home or you got the white away?
CS: You know what, I haven’t worn either yet this week. I’m trying to save the mojo so I don’t want to wear ‘em out.
GC: Did you get a [Troy] Polamalu shirt yet?
CS: No, no. I’m not a frontrunner like that.
John Dennis: I think you should grow your hair out like Polamalu’s Curt…
CS: I’m growing my hair out, but I don’t have the braids.
GC: If I were a Steeler fan I would have a Jack Lambert shirt…
CS: I have a Lambert, I have a Mean Joe Greene, a Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Swan, and Stallworth.
“I woke up and my foot was normalâ€
JD: Twenty-six days until pitchers and catchers, how’s your schedule going?
CS: Holy crap… I swear the first day of spring is like Christmas, it seems like it’s forever away and then the next day it’s on top of you. This winter’s gone by so fast. And it’s been so hectic and so busy but I’m excited. I’m nervous, I’m excited, a lot of things to hopefully make up for on a personal level and on a team level coming into this season.
JD: How’s your offseason has gone in terms of getting back to where you want to be?
CS: Fantastic. About 14-17 days ago, I woke up and my foot was normal… going through workouts and doing the stuff I’m doing here, and I don’t know what the combination was but it feels right again, it feels normal, it feels like it’s always felt … I have some aches and pains early in the morning but it’s felt normal for the first time in a long, long time.
Noticed a change three weeks ago
JD: Were your workouts designed to get your foot back in order or were they just the usual routine preseason baseball workouts that you’ve always done?
CS: Much more of the normal routine than anything. I started about three weeks earlier this year, real early December and we’ve been going since then. I don’t know what it was but I really noticed it more throwing than anything. This winter I’m throwing with (Giants pitcher) Jason Schmidt out here in Phoenix on the program that I’ve had for about 10 years now. I just started noticing everything changing about three weeks ago.
The shape of things to come
GC: Hey, the picture of you and Shonda dropping the puck at the Coyotes game made the rounds and you look pretty slim in that shot… for you pretty slim. How much weight have you lost?
CS: I don’t know; a couple of pounds. I definitely, being able to run, and being able to move extensively to do workouts has changed my body comp dramatically in the last month, month and a half, and that’s something I haven’t been able to do for almost a year so I knew that was going to have a dramatic impact on how I felt, how my foot felt, how my body felt going into spring training.
On Theo and the front office saga
GC: What do you think … of what’s happening upstairs [with the Red Sox unsettled front office situation]?
CS: Was I telling the truth [when I spoke to Dennis and Callahan about what was happening at the time Theo left]? It’s one of those things where if you had gone to sleep, or been in a coma eight weeks, 10 weeks, and woke up you’d think nothing was different other than a couple of players had left.
Theo’s back. That’s all I care about. That’s all any of the players care about. I would like to think that he’s back and probably with a little bit more … he’s in more of a situation that he wanted when he left.
I laughed at all the people that are up in arms, and calling him out that he’s somehow lost some of his integrity or whatever they wanted to call it by doing what he did, but the way I look at it is, there were a lot of issues that were unresolved that he felt he wasn’t going to compromise some things and be here, and those things changed over the last 10 weeks. And they changed, and he came back.
GC: Why does it matter to you?
CS: Because of the kind of person that he is, the confidence that I have in him. I’ve been in situations as a player in the past where a lot of guys won’t say anything, but I’ve always felt like ... if I personally expect myself to give the team everything that they expect from me and I expect from myself every day to go out there and win, then I expect the same commitment from the people in the front office and Theo’s one of the few people I’ve ever run into where I know there’s not a minute that goes by in the day that he isn’t trying to make the team better, trying to do something to give this team a chance to win a championship and that’s all you can ask for. Once again we’re going to spring training with a team that can go to the World Series and as a player; it’s up to me now. It’s up to me and the 24 other guys that head north. It’s up to us to win a world championship.
It certainly is a different team. It’s going to be tremendously different team chemistry wise and I’m not really sure that’s going to end up being a bad thing.