Questioning the Bloody Sock

Boston players and manager Terry Francona are in a tizzy because Baltimore broadcaster Gary Thorne has claimed that Schilling's bloody sock in the sixth game of the 2004 ALCS was actually paint--and that he was told of this by Doug Mirabelli.

"It was all for PR," Thorne claims, supposedly quoting Mirabelli.

"I never said that," Mirabelli predictably, angrily denied. "I know it was blood. Everybody knows it was blood."


I personally don't care what it was--it doesn't diminish an amazing, gutsy, clutch performance. Blood or no blood, he pitched the game of his life on a gimpy leg. Even without the theatrics, his performance was mind-blowing. Willis Reed, Kirk Gibson, they've got nothing on Schilling. Anyone who's ever tried to play through debilitating injury and pain knows how impossibly difficult what he did was.

I can't help but point out, though, that during game six I noticed that Schilling was the only Sox player in the starting nine who chose to wore white sanitary socks with stirrups. In the entire series, actually, I didn't see anyone else wearing them. Everyone else wore red socks.

Okay...Schilling wore this combination all through the postseason, so maybe he just likes stirrups. He's an old fashioned kinda guy. The chance that he happened to be the only guy wearing white socks and also the only guy bleeding out his leg is probable. The alternative theory--that the whole red stain on a white sock was premeditated--is equally probable, whether it was blood or not.

Schilling's a smart guy, and there is no greater stage for heroics in all of baseball then being on Boston's side and knocking down the hated Yanks in the postseason. Being visibly injured while doing this is enough to catapult you into the history books as a godlike figure, especially in New England--don't think Schilling didn't know this. And you can't see blood--or paint, or ketchup, or anything red--if you're wearing a red sock.