Take yourself back to October 16, 2004. The Red Sox have just lost the third game of the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees in humiliating fashion, 19-8. You threw the 2004 season in the same bin as 1946, 1967 1975, 1978, and 1986. Good, but just not good 
enough. Darn that Babe, anyway. Darn Johnny Pesky, darn Bucky Dent, darn Bill Buckner, darn every player that ever wore pinstripes.
Game four. October 17, 2004. The stolen base to end all stolen bases. Fireworks from David Ortiz. Did you believe then? They still had three games to win. Did you believe after game five? Still down 3-2 to the Yankees?
Or did you believe that this comeback was really possible after the bloody sock performance by Curt Schilling? If Schilling, battered in game one, could pitch like that with an ankle held together by sutures and a prayer, maybe this comeback really could be possible.
Curt Schilling ended his twenty-year major league career Monday, not with a tip of the cap and a wave, but with a few grateful words posted to his blog, 38 Pitches. And face it, Red Sox Nation. You’re going to miss him.
Oh, he won’t be far out of eyesight. Tune into the radio, surf the web, watch TV. He’ll be there. But he won’t be where it matters, on the pitching mound at Fenway Park.
Call him a blowhard. Call him opinionated; call him an idiot. None of it matters.
Call him a hero. That matters. Remember just how big 2004 was. Remember that the Sox were down 3-0 to the Yankees, a deficit no Major League Baseball team had ever made up. Remember that a stolen base, a few idiots, and a bloody sock later, the Sox were World Champions for the first time in 86 years. Remember that, in late October five years ago, you would have petitioned the Pope for Schilling’s canonization. To be glad of his retirement, to base your entire opinion of him on his political beliefs, to cast him into a pile of has-been pitchers, is not only ungrateful but entirely forgetful.
It absolutely disgusts me when Red Sox fans claim to hate Curt Schilling. The only Sox fan who could hate Curt Schilling is a bandwagon fan who suddenly discovered the Red Sox in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the 2004 ALCS. Did you forget? Is your memory really that short? Did you forget making 55,000 people from New York shut up? Did you forget coming to Boston for one purpose and accomplishing it in one year?
So, Red Sox fans, show your gratitude to one of the clutchiest pitchers (and word inventors) the Red Sox have ever had, and judge him on his accomplishments in a baseball uniform. Forget about his big mouth, forget the political beliefs you may disagree with. Remember the bloody sock, and be grateful.
