First of all, I have been a Boston Red Sox fan for 56 years, so there is no anti-Red Sox bias in my question.
One of the most famous events in recent baseball history is Boston’s Curt Schilling pitching in Game Six of the 2004 ALCS against the New York Yankees with blood from the sutures of an experimental operation performed on his ankle the night before visably soaking into his sock. The sock has even been enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum.
However, I recall reading an interview in the newspaper two days after the event, before all the myth-making really began, with the doctor who had performed the operation. He said that it wasn’t blood, that it was the red salve he had put on the sutures to help in the healing process.
Noone to whom I have mentioned this remembers such an article or interview. They think I made it up. Does anyone here remember it? Or am I really remembering something that never happened?
So he bled a little bit. Big effing deal. This the most over-hyped future “legend” in sports. Now, if he had played after an ankle injury like the following, I might give him some credit. For the queasy, it’s a bit gruesome, but not too extreme:
Could you be thinking of the incident last year where Gary Thorne reported that Doug Mirabelli said it wasn’t blood on the stock? It was reported as fact before the teammate said it was a joke.
“He bled a little” Fiddle, do you have ANY idea about the procedure that was done? It was an experimental surgery devised by his doctor that had never been done before - in fact, it was only practiced for the first time a day or two before the surgery - and that was on cadavers. http://www.bookofjoe.com/2004/10/behindthemedspe_34.html
Even if it was “red slave”, who cares. Everyone who watched the game on TV got a giant closeup of Schilling’s bloody sock. That was the kind of baseball monent that only comes around like once a decade (I’d say Ripken’s 2131 was the last moment before the bloody sock).
The man had an experimental surgery done that day and proceeded to pitch the game of his life. Unless it comes out that he had a little pump hidden in his glove and that was stage blood, it doesn’t matter whether the bloody sock was really blood or just salve.
I’m pretty sure there was a follow-up story on ESPN.com a while back that showed the sock with what was clearly a dark brown stain on it, so I say fact.
Now, my question to you, Ronald C.: Were this a hoax…so what? This had NO EFFECT ON THE GAME whatsoever. At the very worst, it was a bit of gamesmanship that caught the Yankees off guard. That “intentional watermelon to Cal Ripken in the All-Star Game” wasn’t as meaningless.
Geez…the Red Sox pull off a mind-blowing comeback against baseball’s Evil Empire and send one of the mightiest sports albatrosses of all time rocketing past Alpha Centauri, and all anyone ever talks about is the damn sock?
Alright, it was a complicated procedure. Fine. Was Schilling in great pain when he pitched? If so, hats off to him. But if not, I say again: He bled a little. Big fucking deal.
