This Schilling still had time to sit back in his den, between shepherding his four kids out of the room as they took turns imploring Dad to not dally too long, and willingly wander wherever a visitor asked him to go. From telling tales about how it all began as a Sox minor leaguer (he found out he'd been traded by the Sox watching TV in a clubhouse in New Britain, Conn.) to playing with the Wild Thing and the Big Unit, to fighting with Deion Sanders and punching out a TV camera, to what it will be like to be reunited with Terry Francona as manager and introduced to Pedro Martinez as his new running mate.
Oh, he'll never be shy with a story. Teammates in Arizona used to call him "Red Light," for the way he turned on for the TV cameras. Except on the days he pitches, when he shuts himself into an interior world that has darkness at a core where there usually is light.
"Before I pitch any game, from spring training to Game 7 of the World Series, I'm scared to death," says a man who has made it his passion to offer the hope of longer life to those fighting a disease named after Lou Gehrig, whose name he and his wife, Shonda, have given to one of their sons.
"But that's the drive," he said. "That's where I get it. That's the motivation.
"The feeling after I lose a game, I can't describe how miserable, and the elation I feel after I pitch good is so much less than the bad is bad."
But the start of spring training is still calendar pages away, and that fear that closes in once every five days for the next eight months remains in hibernation. There is plenty of time for stories, and laughter, and free-ranging opinions that will never stop emanating from whatever corner of any clubhouse he may occupy. Opinions that may delight, inform, enrage, but never bore.
"I care what people think," he says, "but that doesn't change what I say. I am who I am."
So pull up a chair, forget about glancing at your watch, and listen. If you're lucky, by the time he's done, Curt Schilling will feel anything but like a stranger.
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