Sox Drawer: SOX/STANKS Leftovers

Last words on the Stanks series in regards to the A-Rod/Pedroia dustup and Schill's performance in Game 3 last night.

As for the Rodriguez play, nothing materialized last night by way of Boston retaliating for A-Rod's unquestionably cheap play sliding into second base late in Game 2. But the play was rehashed in a curious piece in today's Globe by Curt Schilling's BFF, Dan Shaughnessy, perhaps trying to re-stoke the fire before the teams next meeting June 1st.

Here's another looks at the play, and the subsequent reactions from the parties involved.

"It was a hard slide. It was an awkward slide. We're struggling for every run. I may have come up [with my elbow], but I didn't roll. They have their opinion over there, but I don't take exception . . . I'm not going to go in like a little baby and try to hug him."--Rodriguez

"He better get down next time. If he doesn't he's going to get hit by the ball . . . I wouldn't slide into Derek Jeter like that. I slide in hard, but low. I wouldn't try to hurt Derek Jeter."---Pedroia (notice how even the rookie knows to include Jeter in any demeaning comments about A-Rod? Nice touch, kid)

"Hey, we're playing for our lives right now. There's no room for distraction. Every game for us is a playoff game. They've got a great team over there and I respect them. I always play hard and I'm never
going to apologize for the way I play. Just try to keep it clean. It's just part of baseball. "--A-Rod the self-help god.

And he wonders why people want to vomit when he speaks. This is what the managers had to offer:

"The only thing I saw is that he went in hard."--Torre, defending his player to the hilt

"I'm not going there. That's not baseball. I'm not that interested."--Tito, ducking & covering like a pro

Okay, let's put this thing to rest for a while. Because we all know that when the time is right and the situation ideal, the Sox will retaliate with a pitch or a play that will be so hard it will turn Rodriguez' lips blue.

Oops, too late.

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As for Schilling's performance last night, just as I expected he went on his blog, 38 Pitches, today and ripped his lack of control and failure to pick up his team, and as usual he was more than a little bit frank when assessing his outing.

"A craptastic finish to what could have been a nice series. I never gave us a chance to even get into this game. I felt great during the day, even better after warmups and then the game had to start."

"24 base runners in the past 12 innings means there isn’t just one problem here. From lack of command to horrible execution, the problems run the gamut. This game always is and always will be about making adjustments and right now there is a plethora of adjustments that need to be made."

"Regardless of the situation I just couldn’t stop the bleeding and continued to let them pull away inning after inning."

That was the gist of it. Look you gotta say this about the guy-he is accountable. He's a realist and realistically he knows that if he pitches like this for any long stretch, the Sox chances of cruising to the East title get mighty slim. He needs to improve, knows he needs to improve, and hopefully in his next start we'll see that improvement.

BTW, Shaughnessy couldn't help but get a shot off on Schilling in his piece today, saying that "Schilling was probably blogging when A-Rod came up for the fourth time."

Stay tuned, this feud could be more interesting than the A-Rod/Pedroia mini-cident.