Former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling joined the Big Show on Thursday afternoon. Schilling, who will be joining The Big Show throughout the MLB Playoffs, broke down the American League Division Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Curt talked about this personal experiences pitching against the Angels and matching up against their lineup. CLICK HERE to listen to the complete interview with Glenn Ordway, Pete Sheppard, Lou Merloni and Fred Smerlas.

RED SOX KEYS

1) Lester/Beckett fastball command — Look at their first time through the lineup. If Josh is commanding the outside corner to right-handed hitters, and Jon is commanding the inside corner to right-handed hitters, they’ll win. It won’t take that long IMO, but give them one time through. Normally I wouldn’t give them nine hitters, but I really have issues with seeing any starter from LA shut down the Sox lineup to where one first-inning run loses a game.

2) Ellsbury — He’s more dangerous on the bases than any Angels player, and if he’s on and causing problems for Angels starters, it adds a worry I don’t think they are considering as they head into the series. The Sox have 6-8 guys who can take you deep. If Jacoby on the bases is an issue, it could wreck all sorts of game-planning by Angels pitchers against Sox hitters.

3) Seventh and eighth innings — Yeah, you love to have a ‘pen full of options, but in October few teams have, or use, multiple pitchers out of the bullpen before the closer. If Oki can find a partner in Bard or Saito, or if Wagner is throwing strikes and has his usual stuff, the Sox could literally shorten games to six innings.

ANGELS KEYS

1) Team speed is useless if you don’t get on. It’s a double-edged sword. Team speed works when your hitters are patient and work counts. If you do that, and Josh and Jon are commanding their fastballs, you lose.

2) Someone in their rotation must show shut-down capability. It’s a staff-wide thing. If they get pounded in Game 1, that stuff steamrolls a rotation. I’ve been on both sides, and they don’t have a power arm to stop the Sox. Game 1 is going to be huge in either enforcing or changing the “Here we go again” mentality

3) Mike Scioscia — Team speed is useless if the manager doesn’t use it. I never felt the Angels were aggressive in October. It almost felt like their season-long formula of manufacturing runs stopped when the calendar turned to avoid having “outs” being made by the manager. Likely not true, but I will be interested to see if they push it. I don’t think they have any choice but to run, run fast, and run often. The only bat that you might worry about for every game is Morales.

ATTACKING THE ANGELS LINEUP

The key to beating them is literally there before the game starts. If you can get the ball to home in 1.25 seconds or less, you can stop many running situations. Taking away team speed is like taking hitters OUT of the lineup.

Obviously: “You can’t steal first base.” Walks, or lack thereof, will be HUGE this series, depending on who you are talking about. The OBP of a walk is 1.000. When the BEST hitters put the BEST hitter’s-count pitches in play, they still make outs 50-75 percent of the time. If you can understand that approach, you stay within the strike zone and great things happen.

To be honest, one of my biggest fears is the umpiring crew. This is about as bad a crew as I have ever seen assembled. Joe West, for all his pomp and circumstance, can ump a game. C.B. Buckner? Greg Gibson? Not so much. I’m blown away that A) They made the postseason and B) They are umping what I think will be the most-watched series. If I HAD to put them on the postseason roster, I’d try to hide them on the outfield foul lines of Colorado. Look for BOTH to have game impact in this series.

From the standpoint of shutting down the Angels hitters, Sox pitchers know pitch-by-pitch, AB-by-AB and situation-by-situation the best possible plan to get these guys out. The entire staff knows it. I won’t put game plans in here. Not that the Angels hitters don’t know what they are going to see, but I don’t want to help if I don’t have to.

It will come down to execution. All three guys – Beckett, Lester and Clay Buchholz — will thrive on the same thing. Josh’s curveball, Jon’s cutter and Clay’s change and curveball will ONLY be huge pitches if they are commanding their fastballs. Never is that more important than October, and at no time is it more important than that first time through the lineup.

You generally don’t get a second time around if you are lacking fastball command. Hitters, good ones, are at peak performance (with the exception of guys who suck in the postseason), and you don’t get a second chance to make a mistake.

I have generally found you only worry about privacy when you have something to hide.

I know there are tons of people worried not only about the health care bill, but also what appears to be the ramrod process pushed by those who know it’s going to get crushed the minute the details become public.

This administration, time and again, has done the exact opposite of what was promised. Transparency, accountability? This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of both. Anyone wonder why that is?

Don’t you find it odd, but totally understandable,  that Democrats are lining up AGAINST making this stuff available to the public prior to the vote and Republicans are not?

No coincidence, none at all.

This linked article is one I am very curious to know what people think about. I know how I feel.

If you don’t care how I feel, leave now.

Let me get this straight. The man in charge of the 68,000 American men and women putting their lives on the line, as well as the 100,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan, is in trouble.

He’s in trouble for speaking his mind and telling us, the American people, exactly the truth as he believes it to be.

Basically, he tells us that the half-assed efforts being considered, the ideas of military stalwart Joe Biden to use Special Forces strike teams and unpiloted drones, will lead to an unfavorable result.

We’re being fed two different stories on every front now. The media rants, the government rants when “leaks” lead to even an ounce of unfavorable press. Yet, the second a leak sheds a positive spin on anything governmental, it’s splattered from coast to coast.

An adviser to the administration said: “People aren’t sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn’t seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly.”

Is that possible? I mean he’s not speaking Joe Biden plain and giving away national defense secret locations, but he’s speaking as the man in charge of all allied ground forces in theater right? Don’t WE want him to speak plainly? Speak the truth where no harm can come to our soldiers? In fact, isn’t he spelling out in pretty plain words what he believes our politicians back home need to do to allow our men and women the best chance to A) survive and B) win?

Then we have this nugget:

He went on to say: “Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.”

Which, if you read the article, is followed with this:

He will hold at least one more this week, but a decision on how far to follow Gen McChrystal’s recommendation to send 40,000 more US troops will not be made for several weeks.

I completely understand the need to NOT knee-jerk and not overreact, but at the same time lives are being lost with every full rotation of the clock we see. This IS life and death, this IS real. It doesn’t get more real than this. That’s not to even speak to the fact that the war in Afghanistan has been pushed to back page news except when Americans and NATO soldiers are killed. Yes, we have domestic issues that must be resolved, but that should in no way impact the process, speed or timing in which the president of this nation allows the men charged with military action and planning to do their jobs, right?

He added that it was highly unusual for a senior military officer to “pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy.”

This offends me in so many ways. This highly decorated “senior military officer” is the EXACT man I want pressuring ANYONE involved in decision-making, ever. That’s what he does, that’s who he is. If you are stupid or ignorant enough to think you know better — or have the “right plan” — than the man with boots on the ground over there, well, you’re lost.

Finally there is this:

“They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong,” said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense.

Critics also pointed out that before their Copenhagen encounter Mr. Obama had only met Gen. McChrystal once since his appointment in June.

Here is where I, as a citizen, have some huge issues. Brilliant military men, men tasked with leading this nation’s military, already are recognizing this administration’s desires, and smart people are recognizing this for what it is. They know they don’t or aren’t going to get this government’s backing WITHOUT the public completely aware of the score. Why would they do this? Is political capital so valuable that you’d put lives at risk? Is a political campaign, four years away, that valuable to people in our government? Is it? Is that out of the realm of possibility?

And lastly, how is it possible that the president of the United States has only had time to meet face to face with the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan only once since June? That’s four months. I am not naive enough to think they both don’t have ridiculous schedules, but if the president hadn’t thought the Olympic bid so important he wouldn’t even have been in the same hemisphere to have this meeting, right? If the War on Terror is such a huge priority, why has this not happened sooner? I know that they can “talk” from anyplace on the planet at a moment’s notice — I assume they have before this, but I don’t know. But if they know, and they did, that a face-to-face meeting was as much for perception and support as it was for substance, maybe more so, why didn’t that rate higher on the priority scale?

Here’s the reason this bothers me so much. Spending 10 days in theater was the most eye-opening and rewarding thing I’ve ever done. No, it didn’t make me an expert, not even close, on the war over there. What it did do is explain to me that the soldiers, the privates, the men patrolling hostile territory 24/7, living and dying, are truly bothered by the fact that the media on this side of the ocean was NOT reporting on the war they were fighting. Far from it. The lies and BS we were, are and will be told are often times quite the opposite of the facts in play.

First Lt. Sale Solaita is a very dear friend. Sale (Pronounced “Solly”) is the big Samoan that escorted both my friend and I during our 10 day stay in Iraq in 2008. Sale is Samoan, and his family is from Samoa.

Anyone following the news knows there was a MASSIVE earthquake and an ensuing Tsunami that has taken an incredible toll in lives and homes.

Rarely in life do we get a chance to give back so meaningfully to the men and women who offer the ultimate sacrifice for us, in service of our nation and freedoms. I don’t need to, but I will anyway, tell you that Sale is about as fine a man as you could ever hope to meet. Decorated service in the War in Iraq with a new baby to come home to when he returned.

Sale has listed the two ways to help below, if you can please give in any amount possible.

From the bottom of my heart for any and all that can help!

God Bless,

Curt

You could do either one of the 2:

1)  Send a check to:
 
 AIGA FOUNDATION:

c/o George Malauulu

re: AMERICAN SAMOA RELIEF FUND

3133 San Francisco Avenue

Long Beach, CA 90806

2) Wait until the helpsamoa.com site puts up their paypal account on www.helpsamoa.com.

Curt Schilling went on the Dennis & Callahan Show on Thursday morning, and discussed his reasons for electing not to run for the vacant Massachusetts Senate seat. A transcript of that part of the conversation follows. To listen to the complete interview (in which Schilling also discussed the state of the Red Sox heading into the final days of the regular season), CLICK HERE:

Was the decision to withdraw personal or was it related to Scott Brown?

Totally internal. I didn’t even get a chance to push the outside pieces and figure out where they fell. I can’t commit the time. At the end of the day, if I wasn’t going to have the chance to be literally all-in from a commitment standpoint, there was absolutely no chance I was going to do it. Maybe it’s naïve or ignorance, whatever you want to call it, but I was going in with the thought that I was going to win this thing and what that would mean. I don’t think that would have made my marriage and my relationship with my children better. If you want to talk about external forces, first of all, I could care less who’s running. If I was running, I was running with the thought that I could kick everyone’s ass who’s in it. I’ve got some friends who are going to be out and about and involved in the next round of elections, both in state and in government. I’ll do what I can do when I can do it.

I talked to Sen. McCain. I had a really good chat with him. I wanted to make sure he heard it from me first, because he’s been someone I’ve talked to repeatedly through the process. He’s been somewhat of a mentor over the last couple of months. It’s interesting, because I was going to announce it and then I was going to follow it up immediately by talking about potential people I was interested in being involved in, and he said, ‘Do me a favor, and do yourself a favor. Do not mention anybody else’s name until you’re 100 percent sure that you’re going to support that person and that person stands for the things you believe in.’ I took that piece of advice to heart.

What were the family considerations?

If you really sat down, and I did this, and started to write down what it might mean, you’d quickly come up that you’d better have an open slate for the next couple of years. Open meaning: you’re not committed to raising kids, you’re not committed to being at home, you’re not committed to being around for your wife and family. We did that for 19 years.

Did you figure out the cost of running?

I was led to believe it probably wouldn’t cost me anything if I wanted to [run]. There was enough support financially. That was one of my big dilemmas. There was enough support financially for me not to run on my dime. I talked about this earlier. I don’t know the intricacies of campaign financing from the standpoint of what you can and can’t do. I know you can’t take checks from special interests – or you can take checks from special-interest groups, but you just can’t let people know about it. I was going to be able to do this probably without cutting a check for anything. In this day and age, with the financial situation both locally and nationally, I wasn’t sure that would have been the responsible thing.

Were you concerned that fundraising for your campaign would lead to tradeoffs with fundraising for ALS research and the SHADE Foundation?

I posted on my blog yesterday, one of the concerns and one of the things Sen. McCain said, was maybe down the road you’ll decide to do this, but right now focus on the things you guys are committed to, which is your wife and your kid, and ALS and the SHADE foundation. That’s about 24 to 28 hours of work a day already. So it becomes easy when you start to lay those cards on the table and realize what playing them means.

Thank you to everyone who reached out to me and voiced their support of my potential bid. I received just an enormous amount of support. I’m incredibly appreciative of that. I think it was legitimate, in the amount of hate mail I received, that people were honestly concerned and worried. That made me feel good as well.

Will you campaign for and support Scott Brown?

I have intentions of supporting somebody. Right now, I’m doing my due diligence. I have received the information I’ve asked for from the people I’ve asked it from, to go through their platforms, to understand what they’re trying to get done. When my choice becomes clear, I’ll make that public.

It may never make sense for me to do it, but right now it certainly does not.

Given the amount of things going on, I cannot in good conscience even consider running for the open Senate seat here in Massachusetts.

While I sincerely appreciate the outreach and the kind words I’ve received, I think at the end of the day it would be the wrong decision for all involved for me to attempt this.

I wouldn’t have even considered it if I didn’t think I could win. I don’t think I possess the experience I would want, or the time needed, to commit to doing this.

This state is in desperate need of someone new, someone fresh, someone completely dedicated to the constituents of the Commonwealth. While I think I would be all three, it’s a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year job, and 38 Studios, my family, ALS and Shade are the things that I need to commit my time to right now.

To those that have extended offers of help and encouragement, I sincerely appreciate it all.

Speaking on the Dennis & Callahan Show, Curt Schilling said he is still undecided in regards to running for the U.S. Senate seat previously occupied by the late Ted Kennedy. Schilling said his decision will come down to how it affects his family, having been assured by “people in the Republican party” that raising finances for such a campaign won’t be an issue. Schilling also talked about Wednesday night’s Red Sox win, Jason Varitek’s future and the importance of Alex Gonzalez.

Click here for Part 1 of the interview.

Click here for Part 2 of the interview.

Nineteen years ago Shonda and I met a man named Dick Bergeron. Dick had been recently diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

ALS, today, is still 100 percent fatal. However, in the past 19 years Lou’s name has gained notoriety and recognition in many positive ways.

His life story has been written about many times over. This is the best book I’ve ever read on it.

Why is this relevant? For two reasons, really. The first was the nation becoming aware of Lou during the previous decade, when Cal Ripken broke Lou’s consecutive game streak. Cal did it with a blue collar work ethic unmatched in anyone I ever played with. Knowing Cal’s father, it was easy to see how and why he was who he was.

The second reason occurred this past weekend. On a rain-soaked evening in the new Yankee Stadium, Derek Jeter lined an opposite-field single for career hit No. 2,722 and became the all-time hits leader for the New York Yankee franchise. The event got some good PR and some decent coverage, but it’s far more significant than the coverage it’s been given, to me anyway. This isn’t the Nationals or Padres we’re talking about, this is one of sports’ oldest franchises and home of the game’s greatest all-time players.

Red Sox fans are pretty much in agreement that Jeter is a player they love to “not like.” I don’t say hate because real Sox fans — dyed-in-the-wool Sox Nation members — can’t hate the guy. You can dislike him immensely, and much of that is due to the pinstripes, but there is nothing we know of that would give pause, rhyme or reason to not having immense respect for what he’s done on and off the field.

His early career was marked by trend-setting numbers at a position defined by defense for the past century. Well, that and four World Series rings in his first week or two in the big leagues, it seemed.

But beyond that there are two things that stand out to me.

Derek Jeter has always been above the fray. As someone who’s wallowed in it, “foot-in-mouthed” it hundreds of times, said dumb things and backed up dumber ones, it’s refreshing. He’s shown up, played, and turned in a first-ballot Hall of Fame career in the hardest environment in sports to do any/all of the above.

That, in and of itself, is an accomplishment.

More importantly to me, though, was this. I enjoyed competing against him as much as anyone I ever faced. Derek was that guy who was going to hit his way, regardless, with enough talent to still get hits when you made your pitch and hit your spot. One of my favorite memories was stepping onto the rubber for Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, being as locked in as I’ve ever been, looking into home plate and looking into his eyes, and us smiling at each other, knowing what we were getting ready to experience. By the way, I should never have thrown the fastball away in the seventh inning, I had him if I’d just kept pounding the ball in …

I have no idea how he felt about competing against me, or about me as a player, but I know competing against that guy, for the decade or so we matched up, was what made the Major Leagues the Major Leagues for someone like me.

So, congratulations Derek, you earned every ounce of respect and accolades thrown your way, and you’re one of the few men I ever competed against who is worthy of having his name mentioned with the same reverence and respect as Lou Gehrig.

Curt Schilling appeared on The Big Show on Thursday afternoon, where he answered several questions about the state of a potential candidacy, his motivations underlying his a potential run for the vacant Massachusetts Senate seat, how running as an independent would impact his candidacy and the Republican party, and some specific issues that he’d seek to influence if he runs and is elected. He also touched on the state of the union as it relates to the Red Sox’ starting rotation. A transcript follows. To listen to the complete interview, click here.

Are you running?

I don’t know. I have no idea. I’m very intrigued, for  a lot of reasons. How many opportunities are you presented with in your life to change the world, to make a difference, on a global scale? That’s an awesome thing – an incredible responsibility. It’s a commitment beyond description. It’s a 365-day-a-year job. That requires a massive commitment of time and energy from not just the person running but the family, which is a lot of the discussion that would have to happen.

What have you done so far? What’s determining factor? Doing polling, seeking donors?

Sen. McCain has contacted me. I’ve received a couple different phone calls from a couple different people, expressing, doing some Q&A on whether I was interested. I know there’s some interest in running some legitimate polls to find out if it’s worth doing. I recognize that, I think, if I were to enter the race and ever if we did a half-assed job, it would have an effect, and that might not necessarily be a good thing, on who gets in.

I could be giving myself far, far too much credit, and I could walk in there and get two percent of the vote and it would be a joke. If that’s the potential, I have no interest. I have no interest whatsoever in being involved if I don’t have a legitimate chance to win.

If the data were to support that I had a chance, then I would literally get in it to win it.

Are you doing that now?

I am not doing anything. There are people that are doing some stuff. I’m not going to comment. I’m not exactly sure what the right and wrong thing is to comment on. So for the first time probably in my life, I’m not going to comment. Read the rest of this entry »