Curt Schilling Reveals the Boston Red Sox Asked Him to Take Performance-Enhancing Drugs
The Boston Red Sox have had more bad press the last few years than anyone not named Lindsay Lohan and it doesn’t appear that train isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.
Schilling, the outspoken hero of the 2004 World Series-winning team that broke the legendary Curse of the Bambino, has dropped some gossip that's more eyebrow-raising than last year's last-place finish.
He says the organization approached him during spring training in 2008 about using performance-enhancing drugs to get back on the field after he battled shoulder injuries. Hmm, you think the Sawx would like to shove Schilling's infamous bloody sock in his mouth to keep him quiet?
Schilling told ESPN’s Colin Cowherd, "At the end of my career, in 2008 when I had gotten hurt, there was a conversation that I was involved in in which is was brought to my attention that this is a potential path I might want to pursue.” Amazing, right? A PED story about a Major League Baseball player that DOESN'T involve Alex Rodriguez!
Schilling painted the scene like he did the corners back in his prime:
"It was an incredibly uncomfortable conversation. Because it came up in the midst of a group of people. The other people weren't in the conversation but they could clearly hear the conversation. And it was suggested to me that at my age and in my situation, why not? What did I have to lose? Because if I wasn't going to get healthy, it didn't matter. And if I did get healthy, great."
Schilling says the people who asked him about PEDs are no longer with the team. Consider this development the latest black eye for Red Sox Nation. Between the fried chicken and beer-inspired collapse of 2011 and last year’s colossal Bobby Valentine-led disaster of a season, the team has looked more like the Bad News Bears and less like the model franchise that won World Series titles in 2004 and 2007.
Schilling never did make it back on the field in 2008, or ever again for that matter. He last pitched in 2007 and retired with 216 wins before launching a video game company that fell apart in a more spectacular fashion than the Red Sox did in 2011.