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.

Answering a few questions from our site editor, Rob Bradford, regarding the world of agents …

Bradford: When you hear about the kind of negotiations Mark Teixeira is going through, what stands out?

Me: The mass of misinformation everyone works off of. So little of the facts are ever really that. It’s the ultimate form of second-hand information and in many cases you get people making ‘educated’ guesses, figuring if they’re wrong, so what, but if they are right they ‘broke’ the story.

Bradford: How much interaction with Scott Boras have you had, if any? Did you ever contemplate joining forces with him?

Me: Almost none other than going up against him on a talk show in Philly after the JD Drew draft. I’ve thought about it when thinking about next season. Bottom line is if you want to scrap every penny you can from the bottom of the barrel, leave nothing on the table, he’s your guy. That being said I’ve spoken at length with Jason about him, a guy I have a ton of respect for, and Jason considers him a very close friend, so that means something to me.

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Been a few days and being out of touch is somewhat weird, but understandable.

It’s been an incredible experience to date, I have a ton of pictures but can only post my IPhone stuff for now.

I want to first off thank Tracey Thede. Tracey was Ty and I’s USO Rep on Days 1 and 2 of our trip and she’s just a fantastic and genuine person. Unfortunately due to ankle surgery she wasn’t able to accompany us into Iraq so we are sad to say she’s gone home. We’re going to abuse her next time we see her though …

Next up is Sully. Sully is basically our protection in theater. To picture Sully just imagine a 250-pound Samoan, with about 5 percent body fat and armed. Ya, that’s Sully. Not only that but he’s the kindest man you’d ever want to meet, knows pretty much every person we’ve seen the past three days and if he doesn’t know them, they know him. If you need something, Sully gets it for you, no matter what. Oh, and he can pretty much snap you in half if need be. Not a bad thing to have him hanging around over here. Sully is doing the 18th Airborne proud for sure.

Day 2 was up and running REAL early. The boys below were tasked with getting us into Iraq and our first stop.

Sox Nation alive and well at Camp Beauhring!

Ty was nervous, I wasn’t (lie, bold face lie).

So we take the Blackhawks into Iraq and our entire second day was to be spent at Camp Bucca. Camp Bucca is a detainee center located inside Iraq. My first thought was “Hogan’s Heroes”. Maybe we’d crest over a hill and see this little camp and it would be cool. Read the rest of this entry »