Schilling Breaks His Silence

Curt Calls the Big Show and Calls Out Tony La Russa
and Some Members of the Media.
More highlights here tonight

On the fans getting on Edgar Renteria

Curt Schilling: I thought that a lot of this stems from the comments that Tony (La Russa) made last week that I think were absolutely totally inappropriate. I think Tony put Edgar in a very bad situation. …I love Tony La Russa, but I thought that he put Edgar in a very bad situation. For a player that he talks about caring about so much, I thought he stuck him in a corner there. I’m sure that could play a part of it (Glenn Ordway’s assertion that La Russa was still hurt that Renteria elected to go play in Boston). I would bet that he would probably say ‘no it didn’t’ but I would imagine that there was some of that there but I just thought it was a really bad situation to put Edgar in coming from a guy who talked about caring about the guy so much. You know, I laugh, I listen to Kevin (Millar), and that’s what makes Kevin such a beautiful guy and in a nutshell kind of describes what you have in this clubhouse. He lay in front of a train for his teammates and we would do the same for each other. It’s one of the things that make the dynamics of our clubhouse so great is that you care so much about what your teammates think about you that you push yourself to do some things or get through some things that maybe you normally wouldn’t in another market or in another or area with another group of guys. Edgar knows that every one of us… he’s gonna be that guy at the end of the year. He’s gonna hit .275. He’s gonna hit between 15 and 25 homers. He’s a gold glove, silver slugging All-Star shortstop. …I don’t either, I don’t either (agreeing with Glenn Ordway that people haven’t been harsh on Renteria).

Sean McAdam: Curt can you think of a guy either that you played with in Philadelphia or in Arizona who re-signed with a team or moved to that franchise as a free-agent who had the same problem out of the box, trying to justify the contract?

CS: There was a lot of times in Philadelphia uhh… Edgar Renteria would be getting hit by batteries in Philadelphia by now, no question. We get offended when our teammates get booed much more so than I think we get offended when we get booed because we can kind of deal with it ourselves but you’re never sure how your teammates are going to act and react from being booed. I promise you that nobody knows the situation more so than Edgar. And no one is trying harder to get out of that situation and it’s, I think a first probably real time that he’s struggled and the struggle, given what’s happened, it’s natural, it’s human. Again, I played against the guy for almost a decade in the national league, all the time that he was over there, 6-7 years. He is what he is. He’s a cream of the crop shortstop who’s had a bad 40 game stretch. …And add to the fact that there was a lot of magnification of the situation from the media and everybody in general coming in. He’s struggling, no question. Now all eyes are on him, every at-bat, every pitch. Everybody’s got an answer, everybody’s got a solution. Unfortunately for the most part none of those are going to work until Edgar gets over the hump himself. He knows that and we know that and we’re all okay with hit. The great thing about this though is that Theo has built a team to overcome one, two, three, four, five guys hurt or not meeting expectations, and we’ve done that.

On his injury recovery progress and timetable for return

CS: I don’t know. I don’t know, I’m out of the boot, so that’s a positive step. We’re taking it day by day. I’m in a situation now where my foot is weaker than it was when it got hurt because I’ve been in a boot for three weeks so we’re trying to strengthen it up and get function back into it and at the same time working our butts off to find a way to get somebody out there to build me a shoe that I can actually pitch in because there are issues now, and there have been since spring training, with some of the fine points of my mechanics and one of them is balance which I just cannot seem to get a grasp on right now and I don’t think that I will be able to unless I have a shoe that fits and works. We’ve been spending a lot of time, a lot of hours working with different people to have a shoe built that I’m going to be able to throw in… (This is a) drastically different (situation). Last October was about stabilizing that joint and the shoe kind of wraps itself. It didn’t work, the shoe that Reebok had built, the only reason it didn’t work was because of the stitches we put in the ankle. Right now, I’m looking for something, some sort of shoe that can almost artificially balance my foot and balance my body on it almost like a platform type thing. So we’re working on that and that’s kind of coinciding with the work that Chris (Correnti) and I are doing to get the ankle strong again.