Curt Schilling tackled a couple of hot topics on WEEI radio Friday: the David Ortiz-Dan Shaughnessy PED controversy and the Clay Buchholz ball-sliming scandal.
On the David Ortiz matter, Schilling backs his former teammate and knocks Shaughnessy for once again trying to insert himself into the news. “Because it’s as important for him to be a part of the story as it is to write the story,” Schilling said. “And players have a problem with that.”
He also talks about steroids in general and again states how he never knew how big of a problem it was a problem in his prime years. He believes the testing program now is much better than ever before, and he can’t resist taking a dig at another former teammate:
I do believe that including bloodwork was a game-changer. Here’s what I would say now: Now if you get caught, you’re either Manny Ramirez dumb or you’re going to such extremes to try and cheat and beat a blood test that you deserve whatever they throw at you. It’s obviously not going to stop everybody. But when the players’ association, rightfully so, agreed to include blood testing, that was a game-changer for me. It was something that I never ever thought the Players Association would approve or be OK with. But God bless them, they did.
On the subject of Buchholz and foreign substances, Schilling admitted that he used BullFrog sunscreen, too:
Here’s the thing: I did it. And I did it for the same reasons Clay did it. I would tell you there is no ballpark harder to grip a baseball in than the SkyDome [Rogers Centre]. It is the hardest and the driest environment — for me it was — in the big leagues. I had no saliva, I had cotton mouth in that stadium all the time. You needed something, and it was to keep a grip. You can’t cheat by getting an extra grip on the ball. That’s not how you cheat. You cheat by getting the ball moist and wet. If that was what Clay was trying to do, he would have been doing the opposite of what he actually did. You want the ball to be slick. You want it to be almost like — not spit, but water. He was actually using that stuff to keep a grip.
Jerry Spar has a lengthier transcript with more Schilling quotes over at WEEI.com, along with a link to the interview audio.
