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Schilling Piles on Pedro

It’s been five years since Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez were less-than-perfectly-friendly teammates, yet old bloody sock can’t seem to let things go. After talking about how he didn’t care all that much for Pedro’s sense of humor and laid back personality back in Boston, Schilling brought some seriously oblivious irony to the table:

“You guys remember, when Pedro was here, Pedro played by different rules. And Pedro, to a degree, earned the right to play by different rules. But players that play by different rules and take advantage of those, that’s probably the only reason I ever had issues with Pedro. And it was not a big deal, I know people are going to make it a bigger deal than I’m making it. But the amount of respect and admiration and the loyalty and friendship I have with [Terry Francona] . . . I saw some things, from Opening Day leaving the ballpark in Tito’s first game here. There’s just little, crappy dumb stuff.”

And how didn’t Schilling play by different rules? How many stars write blogs with lots of critical content during the season? How many guys get a free pass for openly and obviously letting themselves get out of shape like Schilling did towards the end of his career? How many ballplayers have been as openly opinionated as Schilling was during his playing days? Given everything we know about the culture of baseball clubhouses, I’m sure there are no small number of former teammates who didn’t much care for the different rules that applied to Schilling, just as Schilling didn’t care for Pedro’s special treatment.

Schilling says " I know people are going to make it a bigger deal than I’m making it.” Of course he does. Indeed, getting his opinion out there, stirring up stuff and having people talk about it is his entire reason for living anymore, is . Which is fine if that’s what he wants to do. But he should at least have a little self-awareness about it.

Pedro is an unorthodox, attention-creating personality. So was Schilling. In light of that, I’m tempted to believe that Schilling’s biggest problem with Pedro was that his time in Boston represented the first time in his career he had some competition as the center of attention.