Trimillenial
Game 133: August 30, 2006
Red Sox (71-62), 2
Athletics (77-56), 7
L: Curt Schilling (14-7)
W: Barry Zito (15-8)
Curt Schilling earned the 3,000th strikeout of his career yesterday. He undoubtedly would have liked to reach this milestone under better circumstances than in the midst of his team’s free fall in both the AL East and wild card standings. However, I am fairly certain he is honored to have attained this mark with the Boston Red Sox. His career has brought him time and again back to Olde Towne Team.
It was the same franchise that drafted him in the second round of the 1986 draft. Two years later he was traded, along with Brady Anderson, to the Baltimore Orioles for Mike Boddicker. On September 7, 1988, in the second inning of a match-up between the Orioles and the Red Sox at Memorial Stadium, Schilling induced Todd Benzinger to half-heartedly swing in the second inning for the first major league strikeout of his career. Oddly enough, Benzinger’s jersey number: 38. Schilling wore 43 with the Orioles.
Schilling wasn’t given the opportunity to distinguish himself in Baltimore and was shuffled off to the Houston Astros in 1991. It was the year that Roger Clemens approached him and told Schilling to get his act together, but with more rustic terminology, as befitting a man born in Ohio and raised in Texas. They had crossed paths when Schilling was a fledgling hurler in the Red Sox organization, and Clemens was not impressed with how the younger man was squandering away his potential.
Since that encounter, Schilling crafted himself into the clutch pitcher you see today.
Congratulations, Curt, for turning it around for yourself and all the teams on which you’ve played.
