By Michael Silverman
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
NEW YORK - Curt Schilling [stats, news]'s availability for the rest of the ALCS is entirely up in the air after the Red Sox [stats, schedule] starter experienced significant discomfort in his right ankle during his extremely rocky, three-inning start in Game 1 last night.
Schilling was injected with enough of the anesthetic Marcaine so that he did not feel pain in last night's start, but each time he pushed off his drive foot he felt a ``popping'' in the injured ankle. He said the injury affected his focus on the mound and resulted in poor pitches, enabling the Yankees to punish Schilling for six hits and six runs in his three short innings of the Yankees' 10-7 win.
Schilling was scheduled to pitch in Game 5 but because he threw just 58 pitches, he could be fresh enough to pitch in Game 4. But that seems a highly unlikely scenario. Prudent minds would place a question mark for Schilling's availability for Game 5 - if that.
``We'll wake up (today) and go from there,'' he said about what comes next. ``If I can't go out there with something better than what I had today, I won't go back out there. This is about winning a world championship. It's popping is what it's doing. It's causing me, in a nutshell, to think about things other than what I was pitching.''
Manager Terry Francona was also unable to look too far into Schilling's future.
``It's way too early,'' Francona said. ``You're getting so far ahead. We played one game.''
Schilling retired the first two batters he faced but back-to-back doubles from Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui, followed by a Bernie Williams single, gave the Yankees a quick 2-0 lead.
After a 1-2-3 second inning, Schilling fell apart in the third, surrendering four runs. He was done and five Red Sox relievers closed out the game.
``I was just trying as hard as I could to focus pitch to pitch, but I can't argue with the manager taking me out at that time,'' Schilling said. ``I couldn't get the job done.''
Pushing off the pitching rubber is the hang-up with Schilling, who after the game said he still felt numbness in the ankle because of the Marcaine. The ankle affects his finely tuned mechanics, which in turn affect his control and velocity.
``I knew from the way I was throwing the baseball, I wasn't getting everything out of it,'' Schilling said of his ankle. ``I know my stride foot was landing about a foot shorter than usual.''
Francona said it's unlikely Schilling worsened his injury during last night's outing. ``I don't think he was hurting, he just wasn't right, wasn't driving, and we'll talk later,'' the manager said. ``We had a game to get through and try to win but he just didn't look right. He didn't complain about any pain or anything like that.''
Schilling's ankle injury bothered him for much of the first half of the regular season, and he aggravated the injury in Game 1 of the Division Series against the Angels. There was some doubt about his availability for Game 1 of the ALCS, but a positive bullpen session at Fenway Park Sunday convinced him and the Sox brass he was good to go.
``I still had good enough stuff to beat those guys. I just couldn't make my pitches,'' said Schilling, who described his bullpen session before the game as ``horrible'' but added that does not always correlate to the quality of his start.
``The results weren't there, obviously,'' catcher Jason Varitek [stats, news] said. ``But I'm not going to take anything away from what (the Yankees) did.''
Schilling also gave the Bombers their due.
``I've been looking forward to this for almost a year. It's incredibly disappointing,'' he said. ``They were better than me tonight - a lot better than me.''
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"I see Johnny Damon five minutes before the game — he's naked," . "Four minutes later, he's on second.
