Game Preview: Stanks at Sox GM3

Clemens (6-6, 4.17) vs. Schilling (8-7, 3.97)
Fenway 8PM ESPN

This regular season finale of the season series with the Stanks will truly be one for the ages.

As in, ages 45 and 40, otherwise known as Mr. Roidger Clemens and Mr. Curt Schilling.

That's right the ultimate game of a long and winding 18-game series has come down to two of the oldest and most decorated lights-out big game pitchers this rivalry has ever seen.

Clemens, the former Sox phenom turned Public Enemy #1 in the Nation, will be making his first regular-season start at Fenway since August 2003 and his first start in his old haunts since an October matchup vs. Pedro Martinez that same season.

The reception will not be kind for the man who has jerked the Sox brass around in two of the last three seasons by leveraging a potential deal with Boston to sign for greater money elsewhere, first in Houston and then this spring with New York.

They'll be a lot of "fuck you too, dickhead!"s flying around Fenway.

This will also be the first time Schilling and Clemens have faced each other since Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, when Schill's D-Backs defeated Clemens and the Stanks 3-2 in a game in which both hurlers turned in herculean efforts. Schilling would go on to win the MVP and then break an 86-year-old curse, while Clemens would go on to string teams along like a 14-year-old girl for the next six years.

Both pitchers have been feeling their age this year, with Schill spending a month on the DL with a shoulder injury and Clemens coming off a two-week hiatus due to an elbow problem. But both will be fired up to get the win in this series finale, a game that might not decide the division title, but one that both teams--and proud pitchers--want badly nonetheless.

Go Sox!