Curt Schilling is indeed a very polarizing figure. Clay Buchholz is as well (to some extent).
The former has a lot of extreme opinions; some of which are quite loathable. The latter makes $7.7 million a year despite not really being that elite at what he does for a living.
ESPN MLB analysts Curt Schilling and John Kruk (Sunday Night Baseball) participated in ESPN’s MLB Opening Night/Opening Day media conference call earlier this week. ESPN will nationally televise a quadruple header tomorrow.
None of those four games include the Boston Red Sox at the Philadelphia Phillies, but as the Red Sox are one of the two or three biggest brands in all of baseball, topics pertaining to the club will always drive the national discussion.
Kruk and Schilling were asked if the Red Sox have a true ace on their pitching staff, to which Schilling replied:
“I think that any time you have to pause to answer that question, your team doesn’t have a legit No. 1.”
“If Lester was here, you’d say Jon Lester. But it’s not going to be Clay Buchholz. I don’t know (about) the other guys. I think Joe Kelly has a chance if he’s healthy.”
Interesting. However, the real fun started when Schilling was asked the natural, obvious follow up question later on the call…what’s wrong with Buchholz? The reporter asked “why won’t Clay Buchholz become an ace?”
“I don’t think he wants to be one. I think there’s a level of commitment mentally and physically you have to have,” Schilling replied.
“You have to have a little bit of a dark side, I think, in the sense that losing has to hurt so bad that you do whatever you can do to make sure it never happens again.”
In the words of Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker “you don’t understand the power of the dark side.”
Schilling them went on to describe Clay Buchholz in a manner sort of similar to how Crash Davis initially depicted Nuke LaLoosh:
“Clay is just kind of, hey, I’m going to pitch today. He’s unbelievably talented, obviously, physically, but there’s another level to the game, and I think that the reason he’s been inconsistent, Cy Young potential in numbers one year to what the hell happened next year is upstairs. I think it’s all above his shoulders.”
Kruk piled on, albeit with a much softer stance. John Kruk was held more a unimpressed view of Buchholz.
“I guess they announced Buchholz was going to pitch opening day. I think that’s just because he’s been there longer than anyone else. I don’t think it’s a reward for great performance from the past,” Kruk said.
Given the high amount of attention ESPN pays to the Boston Red Sox, and the fact that many higher-ups in Bristol are admitted Red Sox supporters, it was quite entertaining to hear a couple of World Wide Leader pundits rip one of the Sox most important players in such a manner.
Do you think Schilling and Kruk are spot on about Clay Buchholz? Or totally full of it? Or somewhere in between?
I’m going to sit this one out, but please, have at it in the comments section below:
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. You can read Banks’ feature stories and op-eds in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and hear his regular guest spots on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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