Santa Claus isn't real

By John McMullen

The Phanatic Magazine

I am about to borrow from Kevin Smith's film Chasing Amy -- with a slight adjustment -- to illustrate a point.

In the movie, Banky Edwards, played by Jason Lee, and Holden (Ben Affleck) are having a discussion.

Let's begin...

Banky Edwards: "Alright, now see this? This is a four-way road, OK? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, OK? Are you following?"

(Editor's note: For the purpose of this exercise please suspend disbelief and pretend Curt Schilling's famous bloody sock is an animate object)

Holden: "Yeah."

Banky Edwards: "Good. Over here, we have Curt Schilling's bloody sock. Down here, we have a man-hating, angry as f*&%, agenda of rage, bitter dyke. Over here, we got Santa Claus, and up here the Easter Bunny. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first?"

Holden: "What is this supposed to prove?"

Banky Edwards: "This is a serious exercise. It's like an SAT question. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first? Curt Schilling's sock, the man-hating dyke, Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny?"

Holden: "The man-hating dyke."

Banky Edwards: "Good. Why? "

Holden: "I don't know."

Banky Edwards: "Because the other three are figments of your f*%$king imagination!"

I'm not exactly the first to call Curt Schilling a fraud for perpetrating the immature act of soiling a sock with a foreign substance so the rest of the world would amp up its adulation.

It's a sad, comical act by a man so self-involved, regular people couldn't fathom it. And that's why Schilling could sell it.

For those who don't remember. Schilling, who had a right ankle tendon injury, had sutures stitched into his ankle so he could pitch in Game 6 against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. A red stain, presumably blood, could be seen on the sock during the game, which the Red Sox won.

Curiously the stain never spread.

Now move ahead to Wednesday night's Mid-Atlantic Sports Network's telecast of Red Sox - Baltimore Orioles game.

In the bottom of the fifth, Orioles play-by-play man Gary Thorne said, matter of factly, on the air that he had been told by Red Sox catcher Doug Mirabelli that the substance was paint, not blood.

"The great story we were talking about the other night was that famous red stocking that he wore when they finally won, the blood on his stocking,"Thorne told color man Jim Palmer. "Nah," Thorne continued. "It was painted. Doug Mirabelli confessed up to it after. It was all for PR."

Thorne seemed oblivious to the bomb he just dropped and I suppose he could have been on his 12th gin-and-tonic but a lot of us who have dealt with Curt in the past just laughed.

Of course, after the game, Mirabelli denied everything. "What? Are you kidding me? He's lying. A straight lie," Mirabelli told the Boston Globe. "I never said that. I know it was blood. Everybody knows it was blood."

A host of others then tried to fall on their swords for the embattled Schilling.

"I am just floored," his manger Terry Francona said. "Schill takes his share of shots, and this one is so far below the belt that I'm embarrassed and I wish somebody would have had the good conscience to ask me."

But my favorite denial of all came from ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian.

"Everyone knows Curt is an egomaniac and if anyone is capable of doing this, it's Curt," Kurkjian said on ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning. "But, I don't think he did."

No word on whether Kurkjian is set to take over all of Curt's public relations work but I certainly understand his line of thinking.

After all why would a grown man do such a thing?

Of course, the answer is even simpler. A grown man didn't -- Curt Schilling did.