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Pitchers Trying To Make Amends

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By JIMMY GOLEN, The Associated Press

Published: October 20, 2007

BOSTON - Before the bloody sock, Curt Schilling was a pitcher in ruin: Injured, ineffective, unsure whether he would be able to help the Red Sox reach the World Series, much less win it.

With his ankle disintegrating beneath his once-powerful push-off, the right-hander was chased from a playoff outing after three innings and scratched from his next start in the 2004 AL Championship Series against the Yankees.

What Schilling - and the Red Sox - did next is part of baseball lore.

'He really shouldn't have pitched,' Boston manager Terry Francona said Friday before putting the team's season in Schilling's hands again. 'And I can't remember one moment ever thinking he wouldn't pitch. And not only that, but that he wouldn't win. And it probably wasn't fair. So I guess that kind of sums up how I feel about Schill.'

And that more than sums up Boston's attitude about sending Schilling out to pitch Game 6 of the ALCS against Cleveland tonight, a week after the second-worst start of his postseason career. Fausto Carmona will also try to overcome a shaky Game 2 start and pitch the Indians into the World Series.

'It's very simple now,' Schilling said. 'I go out and do my job tonight and we win, or I don't and we lose. I don't think that that's too much pressure or too little. It's just reality.'

Schilling and Carmona both made it tough on their teams a week ago, when neither made it out of the fifth inning. The Indians won that one when they scored seven runs in the 11th, and they put the Red Sox on the brink of elimination before Josh Beckett beat Cleveland for the second time Thursday.

Schilling gave up five runs in 4 2/3 innings in Game 2, then spent six days watching his team try to extend the series long enough to give him another chance. But that was only the second-worst playoff start of Schilling's career: The worst was in Game 2 of that '04 series against the Yankees, when Schilling gave up six runs and limped off the mound, unable to come out for the fourth inning.

Before losing to the Yankees in '04, Schilling hadn't lost a postseason game since the 1993 World Series, when he allowed six earned runs in 6 1/3 innings for Philadelphia against Toronto; his next start was a five-hit shutout. In his career, Schilling is 9-2 with a 2.23 ERA in the postseason.

'He's had a tremendous career, and a tremendous postseason career. I think that's well-documented,' Indians manager Eric Wedge said. 'You could just go ahead and put that on the side, because the only thing that matters is tonight.'

If Schilling can turn things around, so can Carmona.

Wedge said the 23-year-old right-hander's problem was trying to be too precise with his pitches instead of sticking with the form that enabled him to win 19 games in the regular season. Carmona said he wasn't worried about pitching in a hostile park or facing one of the best postseason pitchers in baseball history.

'I'm not going to be intimidated by anything,' Carmona said.

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