Playboy Interview: Curt Schilling

The World Series hero as gung ho geek? You might think so, given Curt Schilling's collections of sports and military memorabilia and his fondness for role-playing games. But put a baseball in his hand and Schilling changes from Dilbert to Superman, a 6'4", 230-pound fireballer who humbles .300 hitters. Last year Schilling, 35, won 22 games and lost only six for the Arizona Diamondbacks, with an earned run average of just 2.98. He dueled teammate Randy Johnson for supremacy among big league pitchers, and together they led the D-backs into a classic World Series against the mighty Yankees. And when game seven began, it was Schilling who took the ball for his team. Pressure? Nah. Schilling, who makes $10 million a year, knew what to expect that night. He had worked it all out on his laptop.

Life wasn't always so predictable for the Anchorage-born right-hander, who grew up in Alaska, Arizona, Missouri and other places the Army sent his father. Cliff Schilling was a master sergeant with a pragmatic worldview. "Don't expect life to be fair. You'll be disappointed," he told his only son. "All you can do is take what comes and deal with it." Cliff Schilling had a heart attack in middle age and died when Curt was just 21. Though he didn't live long enough to see his son pitch in the majors, he knew where Curt was headed. "Son," he said, "you have a gift. You are going to pitch in the big leagues."

Curt made his major league debut in 1988, eight months after his dad died. The kid was smart enough to know how to spell discipline, but dumb enough to think he didn't need any. His first team, the Orioles, traded him to the Houston Astros, who made him their closer. He flopped, got demoted and was shipped off to Philadelphia. In 1993 he went 16-7 for the Phillies, but by 1996, the year he turned 30, his career record was 52 wins, 52 losses.

Then something strange began to happen. The middling 30-year-old morphed into a 35-year-old superstar. Such mysteries can be hard to explain, but three events played vital roles: Schilling became a father, he emerged from arm surgery with a better fastball and he got an attitude adjustment from noted sports psychologist Roger Clemens. Another way to look at it: Schilling grew up. The results are clear between the baselines as well as off the field, where he has become a spokesman for the world champion Diamondbacks, for other ballplayers, even for Americans who don't know a slider from a slurve. When the team visited Manhattan during the Series, it was Schilling who gave a passionate, patriotic speech that left rescue workers in tears.

Schilling has been what baseball people call a horse--an ace who takes the ball every fifth day, wins 15 or more games a year and gets richer than most other athletes. From 1997 through 2001 his record was 80-49, with a 3.28 ERA and a blazing 1232 strikeouts in 1170 innings. Those are Hall of Fame numbers, and Schilling's brilliance in the regular season pales beside his mastery in last fall's playoffs and World Series, when he went 4-0 with a 1.12 ERA. For one of the best postseasons ever, he shared Series MVP honors with Johnson.

We sent Kevin Cook to meet baseball's reigning superstar and to get to the bottom of his impressive transformation. Cook reports:

"For a $10 million a year jock, he's kind of lumpy. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, looking pink in Arizona's desert sun, Schilling could pass for the star of the local bowling league. 'This isn't a body,' he likes to say, 'it's a cruel family joke.' We met at his huge new house in Paradise Valley, northwest of Phoenix. Casa Curt is across the street from D-backs first baseman Mark Grace's house, just up the road from Johnson's.

"Curt dandled two-year-old Grant, the youngest of his three kids, while I stared down a burly rottweiler named Slider. This four-time All-Star isn't just a thinking man's pitcher. He is a thinking man. When I mentioned the dodecahedron-shaped dimples on a brand-new golf ball, he took a look and said, 'Those are hexagons.' One of my favorite moments came when he jumped up, grabbed his laptop and brought up a sequence of pitches he threw in last year's World Series. As we watched grainy video of Schilling facing Derek Jeter, he narrated, explaining his thinking on the mound. For me, it was like getting a quick voice lesson from Sinatra. It was clear that the thought behind every pitch was as important as the fire on Schilling's 97-mile-an-hour fastball.

"We talked for half the day, starting with a flashback to the best of all baseball moments, game seven of the World Series."

[Q] Playboy: In the ninth inning of game seven, the Yankees led your Diamondbacks, 2-1. They had Mariano Rivera on the mound. You thought your team was done, didn't you?

[A] Schilling: I felt like, Aw, it's over. Baseball players know the numbers, and in that situation Rivera is practically a lock. I'm in the dugout, thinking I'm going to be the losing pitcher in game seven of the World Series. But Mark Grace gets a hit. Gracie gets us going, and then Rivera makes a bad play on a bunt--he fails to make a fundamental play we've all practiced since spring training. Now we have a rally, and the whole world changes in two or three minutes. I was just wishing I could see it.

[Q] Playboy: You weren't able to see from the dugout?

[A] Schilling: No. No, I couldn't. I was behind Randy Johnson.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't you move?

[A] Schilling: You can't move when there's a rally going! The one time in that inning when I jumped up to see what was happening, we bunted into an out at third base.

[Q] Playboy: With the series on the line, Yankees manager Joe Torre brought in his infield. It was a tough call. His infielders might save a run on a ground ball, but a blooper could go over their heads. Were you glad to see Torre bring in the infield?

[A] Schilling: Absolutely. In New York, game five, they kept the infield back. Reggie Sanders hit a line drive up the middle and Alfonso Soriano caught it with the last bit of webbing in his glove--one of those Yankee miracle plays. Now they bring the infielders in, and Gonzo hits one over them.

[Q] Playboy: You had to see Luis Gonzalez' game-winning hit.

[A] Schilling: Not until three and a half weeks later, when I called it up on the web. When it happened I was sitting there, blocked out. But from the way our guys started jumping around, I knew he hadn't popped up.

[Q] Playboy: You started that game on three days' rest. During the regular season you get four, but you and Johnson pushed your limits last fall, pitching on short rest through the postseason.

[A] Schilling: R.J. and I sat down with the skipper, Bob Brenly, before the Series. We said, "If you want to throw us on three days' rest, do it. Don't think you're pushing us or reaching into some magic bag of tricks. We'll get the job done."

[Q] Playboy: Could you have made another start on short rest? Two more starts?

[A] Schilling: I don't know how many. There are times when you reach down and find out things you never knew about yourself. I count myself lucky, because a lot of people never get to do that, to go up against their limits and see if they can go past them.

[Q] Playboy: But your arm doesn't care about pep talks. Wasn't it hurting?

[A] Schilling: I was sore after game four. I had what I call resting soreness. Your arm might hurt when you throw, that's one thing. But it's something different if you're sitting around with the kids and it's throbbing. That's not just fatigue.

[Q] Playboy: That's something worse.

[A] Schilling: But I always have that late in the season. After 200-some innings, you'd be sore, too. It's not the same as being hurt.

[Q] Playboy: What's the difference between sore and hurt?

[A] Schilling: You can't play if you're hurt. But if it's just pain, you play. That's a difference some guys don't understand, even in the big leagues. You'll hear a player say he can't go, he's not 100 percent. Well, I haven't been 100 percent for 17 years. Not since high school. But as long as I'm not injured, which means hurt too bad to get guys out, then I want the ball.

[Q] Playboy: Your family has had some serious health problems lately. At various times last season your son and wife were hospitalized. How can you pitch under those conditions?

[A] Schilling: I'm analytical about it. When the playoffs started last year, our youngest son, Grant, was in the ICU, having trouble breathing. But it's like my father always said: Life isn't fair. You just have to take what it deals you. A sick child? Something like that consumes your every waking thought when you're not working, but during the game I focus on my pitching.

[Q] Playboy: That takes discipline.

[A] Schilling: What it takes is a strong wife. My wife, Shonda, said, "Here's the situation, and we are going to deal with it." That's how we got through our scare with Grant and another one we had with Gehrig, our older son. Gehrig is six. He had a mole on his foot. There's skin cancer in our family; the doctor didn't like the look of that mole. On the morning of the last game of the World Series, we got the results of the biopsy. Negative--Gehrig was fine.

[Q] Playboy: Your wife had the biggest scare of all.

[A] Schilling: We found out last year, during spring training, that Shonda had skin cancer. It's a shock, but she handled it as few human beings could have. She had her fourth surgery two weeks ago. It had to be under local anesthesia, because she's pregnant with our fourth child. I sat in on this one. I really had no idea how much cutting they do. She had four incisions, each one about four inches wide and a couple inches deep.

[Q] Playboy: What is her prognosis?

[A] Schilling: So far, she's clean. Everything's fine.

[Q] Playboy: Shonda has a blood condition as well.

[A] Schilling: Right. When she was pregnant with Grant, she developed an arterial blood clot in her leg. Turns out she had a rare blood disorder, like her mother. She'll be on blood thinners for the rest of her life. She gets an injection every day--sometimes I give her the shot. And then, about a year ago, Shonda's thyroid shuts down. With all that plus three kids plus my career to deal with, it's a humongous burden. But she amazes me. You know, a lot of ballplayers talk about "marrying over your skis." It means that if you didn't play pro ball, you could never get a girl of this caliber. Shonda was Miss Photogenic in the Miss Maryland pageant, probably the sexiest woman I ever met, a beautiful woman who conceded a lot of her identity to be my wife and the mother of my children. I married over my skis.

[Q] Playboy: We've heard that the next baby was conceived during the World Series. Randy Johnson's wife said that Shonda was making sure that you were a relaxed pitcher.

[A] Schilling: It's true. A Series conception with an All-Star break delivery, we hope.

[Q] Playboy: Heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis told us he follows the old boxing rule: no sex before a big fight.

[A] Schilling: In my sport, you do whatever works. If you don't have sex and then win the game, you don't have sex the next time. If it's sex three times on the day you pitch, you keep it at three times. My wife understands all that. She's in tune with what it takes. On occasion she has pulled some tricks out of her closet, and they have worked.

[Q] Playboy: Has she ever rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, no, he won again"?

[A] Schilling: [Smiling] I remember a time when she was OK with it when I got a no-decision.

[Q] Playboy: Five years ago you were an average pitcher, a 30-year-old with a career record of 52-52. How did you go from mediocre to stellar?

[A] Schilling: First, I got my shoulder fixed by a great doctor, Craig Morgan. And I got religion about taking care of my shoulder. You know how runners take care of their legs? I'm like that with my arm.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to your arm?

[A] Schilling: At first it was misdiagnosed. One night I was pitching in Colorado, throwing 92, 93 miles an hour. Next inning I can't throw 87. Nothing hurt, but the next morning I couldn't lift my arm over my shoulder. The Phillies' team doctor at the time sent me for an MRI. A couple of days later, I get a phone call. "We had one of the technicians take a look at your films," he says, "and you have a torn rotator cuff. So go out and play catch, see how it feels."

[Q] Playboy: Was this 1995 or 1930?

[A] Schilling: My thought exactly. But Jeff Cooper, the team trainer, gave me Dr. Morgan's number, and that saved my career. It wasn't a rotator cuff. I had a Slap lesion.

[Q] Playboy: A slap what?

[A] Schilling: Lesion. In my labrum, which is like a thick rubber band around your shoulder. It stabilizes the shoulder when you throw. My labrum was torn off the bone. Morgan made three little holes and fixed it arthroscopically, and after a lot of rehab I actually gained three or four miles an hour on my fastball.

[Q] Playboy: Is Morgan famous for doing that?

[A] Schilling: He's more of an outcast. Baseball has a little circle of medical people, and if you're not in it, they don't want to hear what you can do. They send players back and forth to each other, and if something goes wrong they cover each other's butts.

[Q] Playboy: You'd think teams would be careful with the guys they're paying millions of dollars.

[A] Schilling: Look under the surface. There's a story there. I mean, if they misdiagnose me, who's going to know? Will they cut open my shoulder and say, "Hey, nothing wrong here. We must have messed up"? No. A guy goes in to get his arm fixed and if he comes back, great. If not, he's a statistic.

[Q] Playboy: You had other problems with the Phillies. You said they weren't trying to win. They shipped you to Arizona.

[A] Schilling: Ed Wade is the Phillies' general manager, and Eddie and I had a love-hate thing. He'd say, "Every fifth day, Curt's our horse. On the other four days he's a horse's ass." Philadelphia is an old-school organization, a bunch of older folks with old money. Winning the World Series isn't necessarily the bottom line for them. The Diamondbacks are different. Jerry Colangelo gives us everything we need, from money to good facilities to day care for our kids. In return, he expects us to win championships. I think that's fair.

[Q] Playboy: You weren't always such a winner. Weren't you a goofball as a rookie, with streaked hair and an earring?

[A] Schilling: Before I came up I was with the Rochester Red Wings, the Orioles' AAA team. So I shaved a line in the side of my head and painted it in the team colors, red and blue. OK, it was stupid--kind of a football thing to do. Drinking beers with the hosts on a Rochester radio show was stupid, too. The Orioles kept sending a team psychologist to Rochester to see me. He said, "Listen, your off-field habits are costing you. They can't trust you to act like a big leaguer." But I didn't learn. One night in 1990, after I got back to the majors, we were playing a big game in Toronto. Kelly Gruber comes up, and I'm running out of the bullpen, asking, "How do I pitch to this guy?"

[Q] Playboy: Hadn't you discussed it with the coaches and catchers before the game?

[A] Schilling: I wasn't paying attention. So now it's ball one. Ball two. Game-winning homer. In the locker room, Jeff Ballard just went off on me: "Fucking be prepared to pitch!" That's when it hit me that I had a duty to my teammates. It's bad enough to cost them one game. You'd sure better not let it happen twice.

[Q] Playboy: Still, Roger Clemens sat you down for a talk in 1991.

[A] Schilling: By then I was with the Astros. Our strength coach told me that Roger wanted to see me. I said, "Oh, cool--Roger Clemens!" But it was an ass-chewing. Roger said, "Sit down and listen. It's time for you to wake up."

[Q] Playboy: He wasn't even a teammate.

[A] Schilling: No, but he thought I had a good arm. "I see a guy with an arm that can do anything," he said, "but he's going to waste away to nothing." He talked about preparation, and about why you pitch. You do it for the respect of your teammates, the respect of your opponents, and your family name.

[Q] Playboy: Did you thank him for what he said that day?

[A] Schilling: Sure. I said, "I want you to know I appreciate this." He said, "I'll know if you appreciate it when I watch what happens."

[Q] Playboy: More than 10 years later, you faced him in game seven.

[A] Schilling: The coolest thing happened after we won. I came out of the press conference and Roger was waiting for me. He gave me a hug and said, "I want you to know how proud I am of you." That's when I choked up. He's one of the guys I occasionally think about when I pitch. I want to impress him with my work. It's peer pressure. When we play the Braves, I'm aware of Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, sitting there watching. You can't help wondering what they think. On our team, it's Randy.

[Q] Playboy: As much as you love Clemens, isn't he a headhunter?

[A] Schilling: That's tough to talk about. I once asked Bob Gibson about his reputation as a headhunter, and he said, "I never drilled people. I wanted to clean the inside part of the plate." Frank Robinson was the guy he hit more than anyone else, but Gibson swears he never tried to do it, because Frank would hit a homer the next time up. Some teams had standing orders: Don't hit Frank, because he'll hit a home run.

[Q] Playboy: Nolan Ryan was another guy who threw at people. Isn't it wrong to put a batter's life in danger?

[A] Schilling: Look, you have to pitch inside. You can't let guys dive out over the plate and hammer the ball. So what can the pitcher do? He can make the hitter conscious of the inside corner. If I make you think about the ball inside, and I throw a ball 95 miles an hour on the outside corner, you won't hit it. It's basically impossible.

[Q] Playboy: But there's a difference between headhunting and pitching inside. You can back a hitter off the plate at waist level.

[A] Schilling: Backing a guy up does nothing. In the major leagues, there are three balls inside that matter--the one that hits a guy, the one that knocks him on his ass and the one that jams the crap out of him and breaks his bat. You pitch for effect, and that's how you have an effect on a hitter. His teammates see it, too.

[Q] Playboy: Don't batters get mad and try harder, like Robinson?

[A] Schilling: Not all of them. Some hitters, you knock them down and they're done for the rest of the game.

[Q] Playboy: Name a player who you hit on purpose.

[A] Schilling: Scott Elarton. And he knew why. He was pitching for the Astros last year and he hit one of our guys. It was blatant retaliation for a base hit. So I threw at Elarton and hit him. We saw each other in the weight room the next day and said hello. He understood.

[Q] Playboy: What if you maim or kill a man? Could you live with that?

[A] Schilling: I've come close. But the guys I've thrown in on are guys I knew could get out of the way.

[Q] Playboy: Who is the most dangerous pitcher you ever saw?

[A] Schilling: Rob Dibble. I love Rob now, but that guy had no regard for where the ball was going.

[Q] Playboy: What about Ryan?

[A] Schilling: He hit very few guys in the head, mainly because they were never comfortable facing him--they were ready to get out of the way.

[Q] Playboy: You make it sound tough to be a big league hitter.

[A] Schilling: It's the hardest thing in sports. I could hit in high school, but now I'll be up at the plate thinking, There is no way I can hit that. The fans don't really see that. One of the odd things about baseball is that 90 percent of the fans have played our sport. They sit out there saying, "I can hit that." But give me a crowd of 50,000 people and 49,500 of them couldn't play catch with a big league ballplayer. The velocities at this level are such that you can't comprehend the speed unless you try it.

[Q] Playboy: Who did you face in your first big league at-bat?

[A] Schilling: Dibble! I singled up the middle to drive in a run. He throws at the next hitter and we get into a brawl.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of the rule that lets umpires eject pitchers they think are throwing at batters?

[A] Schilling: It's the stupidest rule ever, and umpires hate it. It's asking them to read my mind. Let's say it's game seven and I drill Clemens, just to pay him back for every guy he ever drilled. Then he throws at me and gets ejected. That rule could change an entire season.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about rookies and veterans. The vets were tough on the young players when you came up.

[A] Schilling: I'd been a big leaguer for about three minutes when I walked into the Orioles' clubhouse. Mickey Tettleton was sitting by his locker. I smiled. He said, "What the fuck are you looking at?" The guys on that team--him, Billy Ripken, Joe Orsulak, Jim Traber--they were relentless. They'd rip you about your clothes, your hair, your body, your car, your girlfriend. They would break you down. I'd go home almost in tears. I thought those guys despised me, but it was just how they treated rookies. Today if you rag a young player, he'll take it personally. He'll either want to fight or demand a trade.

[Q] Playboy: Were you a mischievous kid in high school?

[A] Schilling: No. I didn't do drugs--never even experimented--and didn't hang around the popular jocks.

[Q] Playboy: That's a funny thing for a big league star to say.

[A] Schilling: I was no star. My cousin started ahead of me at third base on the school team. One of life's ironies--we're still close, and now he sells beer at Bank One Ballpark. Back then, I got cut from the varsity baseball team my junior year. My dad just said, "Deal with it." Some of the dads of the other guys who got cut started a petition. They wanted to get the coach fired. One of those fathers came to our door with the petition and my dad said, "You will turn around and walk away from my house. If you don't want your son to grow up, that's your problem. Mine is going to learn to stand on his own."

[Q] Playboy: Your father, Cliff, was an Army man.

[A] Schilling: He was in the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. He was big, like me, but wasn't a big talker. But we would sit on the couch watching Cubs games on cable, talking about leadoff walks and first-pitch strikes. I can still see him in his blue shorts, nasty-ass white socks and T-shirt. He was a Pirates fan, born in Somerset, Pennsylvania. When he took me to my first big league game, it was a Pirates game--Roberto Clemente's last game, in fact.

[Q] Playboy: That was 1972, so you were only five. Do you remember Clemente?

[A] Schilling: I remember getting lost in the stadium and crying. A security guard brought me back to my dad.

[Q] Playboy: Your father had to leave the Army after he had a heart attack.

[A] Schilling: He had a triple bypass and eventually a melanoma developed on his nose. Then he got lung cancer. In the winter of 1987 we found out it had spread to his brain. One day the doctors told us he might have six months to live. He lived for three days. But the night before he died, we sat up talking until four in the morning. We had never done that before. We talked about pitching, life, everything. The next morning, I was getting ready to drive him to the airport. He was going to have a bowl of soup. The funny thing is, he always used to fake heart attacks. He'd grab his chest and roll his eyes, just joking. That's how he looked that morning, but I knew it wasn't a joke. It was a massive heart attack. His eyes were still open; I was talking to him, trying to get a pulse, calling 911. I remember holding the IV bag in the ambulance, holding it up above him, and when we got to the hospital my arm was about to fall off.

Half an hour later, a doctor comes out. He says that my dad's on life support. There's no brain activity. I had to decide, and I did what he would have wanted. They stopped the life support, then I went in to say goodbye. He was cold, his skin was so cold. I went out and called my mom, who was in Colorado, waiting for his plane. "Dad's not coming," I said. "He's . . . gone." Then I just remember driving in my truck, pulling over to the side of the road and crying so hard I was almost convulsing.

[Q] Playboy: You have had your share of turmoil.

[A] Schilling: One thing that offends me is when people say, "Boy, your wife's getting cancer sure puts things in perspective for you." They assume I lack perspective, because of what I do. But Shonda and I have been working with people affected by ALS--Lou Gehrig's disease--for 11 years. They've given us all the perspective we'll ever need on life and death. I mean, my kids are comfortable around people in wheelchairs. One of them, Dick Bergeron, e-mails me every night before I pitch. Dick is in the latter stages of the illness. Last spring he e-mailed me and promised he would live through the year if we would win the World Series. The night of game seven I e-mailed him: OK, you're still breathing. It's up to me to deliver on my end.

[Q] Playboy: As if you needed any more pressure.

[A] Schilling: We're in touch with a lot of ALS people, and I know they watch the games. When I do bad, they have bad days. It's an incentive.

[Q] Playboy: Did you hear from Dick Bergeron after the game?

[A] Schilling: He said thanks, and I said, "Now you've got to hang around another year, so we can repeat."

[Q] Playboy: Will the Diamondbacks repeat?

[A] Schilling: If Todd Stottlemyre is healthy, we might do even better than last year.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about your start in pro ball. You were drafted out of junior college by the Red Sox.

[A] Schilling: Ray Boone signed me--Bob Boone's father, Bret and Aaron's grandfather. I got a $15,000 bonus, bought a used Jeep and gave the rest to my dad. The club flew me to Elmira, New York, a town I had never heard of. We got paid monthly. My first month as a pro I made $6000. I took that check to the bank and got 300 $20s, threw them on the bed in my hotel room and just lay there, watching TV.

[Q] Playboy: Did you like minor league life?

[A] Schilling: It's like living in a frat house with no classes and getting paid for it. In all these little towns, where the ballpark is the center of things, you're a bigwig. That's a lot of power for a 19- or 20-year-old, and I played it for all it was worth. The Garage Door in Rochester was like my home. I'd walk behind the bar, open a beer and hang out with the guys.

[Q] Playboy: What time did the Garage Door close?

[A] Schilling: When we left.

[Q] Playboy: Were you a big drinker?

[A] Schilling: I was a big guy, so I could throw down my share. Never hard liquor, but I drank a lot of Bud Light. Three six-packs was nothing; I was just getting started.

[Q] Playboy: Social life?

[A] Schilling: Groupies everywhere. Every town had its known girls, the ones you didn't want to be seen with. Nobody wants to be a bottom feeder. The guys would go out, three or four teammates, and usually one of us had the bad job: He was the designated grenade faller. He'd take on the one girl nobody wanted, so the rest of us could hang out with her friends.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever play that role?

[A] Schilling: Sure. I wasn't too proud.

[Q] Playboy: Did the grenade faller spend the night with his date?

[A] Schilling: It depends. He might take her home and then sneak back to the team hotel after curfew. The manager caught me every time I did that. And not just the manager. Once I was renting a room from a lady about 90 years old, living in her attic. I bring in a female companion, and the landlady wakes up. She calls my manager, wakes him up at three a.m. He calls an assistant coach, who is standing outside at dawn, when I walk this girl downstairs.

[Q] Playboy: How did you wake the landlady? Going up the stairs?

[A] Schilling: I got too loud with my female friend. And I'm sure my wife isn't going to love it when this story comes out--

[Q] Playboy: What happened with the coach?

[A] Schilling: He said, "Show the lady out to her car. I'll see you at the park." I'm thinking, God, my career is over. Finally I get to the ballpark. We work out. He doesn't say a thing. I go home, come back the next day, play a game. He never said a word about it. The worry was punishment enough.

[Q] Playboy: And the landlady?

[A] Schilling: She kicked me out, but I wound up moving in with a college girl and her four female roommates. This was nirvana, living in a big old house with five college girls.

[Q] Playboy: How many did you get to know well?

[A] Schilling: I cannot disclose that material for fear that my wife will hear about it.

[Q] Playboy: Do ballplayers still pull pranks on one another?

[A] Schilling: There's the three-man lift, which can be comical or disgusting, depending on what's in the bucket. One player says he can lift three men. They lie on the floor, and the guy in the middle is the victim. The other two pin him down, then you grab a bucket and pour stuff all over the guy. Food, drinks, shaving cream. I've seen guys urinate in the bucket. That's the worst, but pine tar is pretty bad. It gets in your hair and you have to shave all over.

[Q] Playboy: Are you superstitious?

[A] Schilling: Every season I wear the same outfit on the days I pitch. The kids pick it out during spring training.

[Q] Playboy: You must have some input, or they'd have you in shorts and a cowboy hat.

[A] Schilling: Shonda helps them. She's the fashion doll in the family. The one constant is my Scooby Doo underwear. Gehrig started that when he went through a Scooby Doo phase. Then Gonzo got me a pair of Scooby Doo boxer shorts. I'm pitching in them this season.

[Q] Playboy: Any other rituals?

[A] Schilling: I always leave a ticket for my dad at the ballpark. And when I go back and forth to the mound, I don't step on the baseline. The only time I step on the line is when I get taken out of the game, and then I'll kick it.

[Q] Playboy: You have practical habits, too, like moving your fielders around. Isn't that the coach's job?

[A] Schilling: I set up my own defense. I'll use hand signals to move our fielders, during an inning or even between pitches, because if I make this pitch in this spot to this hitter, I know where the ball will be hit. The guys behind me know they're not playing shortstop or second base today, they're playing where I need them.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever help set the defense for other pitchers?

[A] Schilling: One time when Randy was pitching in the Series, Derek Jeter was due to lead off an inning. I knew Jeter was going to bunt. He hadn't had a hit for a long time; I just felt it. I told Matt Williams, "Derek's bunting." Matty moves in two steps at third base and throws him out. It was a good bunt, too.

[Q] Playboy: These days, at least in the regular season, we see plenty of 12-10 games. Home-run kings hit 70-plus homers. But at the same time, you and Johnson and a few other pitchers dominate like Koufax and Drysdale used to. How can that be?

[A] Schilling: It's about strikeouts. I used to talk about this with Richie Ashburn, one of the great old Phillies. In his day, hitters hated striking out. It was embarrassing. Today everybody wants to hit a home run and be on Sports Center. You have leadoff hitters punching out more than 100 times a year. Now, someone like me just loves a guy who strikes out like that, because it means he has holes in his swing. I'll study him, find the holes and exploit them, because I do my homework. Every hitter I face, I've watched on video. If I have faced him before, I'll study those at-bats. If I haven't, I'll get tape of how he hit similar pitchers.

[Q] Playboy: Who's similar?

[A] Schilling: Right-handed four-seam fastball pitchers. To get ready for the Yankees I watched Seattle's Freddy Garcia. Our stuff isn't all that alike, but watching a right-handed power pitcher helped me see where I could get first-pitch strikes, and where my fastball needed to be with two strikes. I watched Oakland's Tim Hudson, too. You like seeing guys who throw well against the Yankees.

[Q] Playboy: How much video do you have?

[A] Schilling: About 25,000 pitches of history--me facing different hitters. I keep my games on CD-ROM, two games on a CD, and keep a notebook during games. I've also got my umpire media guide, with bios in it. You should never call an umpire, "Hey, Blue." They're human--it can't hurt if you call them by their names.

[Q] Playboy: You're working all the angles.

[A] Schilling: [Grabbing his laptop] But this is the main thing. I have 475 players in here. Want to see my history of Derek Jeter? Right here I have all the times I faced him, 65 total pitches, broken down by dates of games, balls, strikes, outs, pitch types, locations, outcomes. I can find patterns. Let's look at all the first pitches--

[Q] Playboy: Two clicks and you have a list of first pitches to Jeter.

[A] Schilling: Eighteen first pitches. OK, did he swing? One, two, three, four, five, six--six out of 18 times he swung at the first pitch. Some guys would be 15 of 18. In the first two pitches they might be 18 of 18: They've always swung at one of my first two pitches.

[Q] Playboy: What does that tell you?

[A] Schilling: I can take advantage of their aggressiveness. It all comes down to presentation: I want to present a pitch the batter likes when it's halfway to the plate, so he'll swing, but when it gets there he can't do anything with it.

[Q] Playboy: Not necessarily to make him swing and miss, but to make him beat (continued on page 164) Curt Schilling(continued from page 74) the ball into the ground.

[A] Schilling: It's like Pedro Martinez says--you don't get great hitters out with strikes. You get them out with balls that look like strikes.

[Q] Playboy: For you, that seems to get easier every year.

[A] Schilling: There are more and more young, aggressive hitters every year. They don't want to hit a single on the first pitch. They want to hit homers. A guy like that, you throw fastballs away. He tries to pull the ball and grounds it to the shortstop if he makes contact.

[Q] Playboy: Jeter is a tougher out?

[A] Schilling: My approach with Derek Jeter was based on what Tim Hudson did to him in the American League playoffs. Hudson pounded him inside and abused him. Jeter never adjusted. So look at him. Jeter never adjusted. So look at this--game four. I'm pounding him inside and he isn't adjusting!

[Q] Playboy: You just jammed him. He hit a looper for an infield out.

[A] Schilling: He wanted the ball farther out. He stayed with his tendency, which is what hitters do. You try to use their tendencies against them. Of course, good hitters will adjust, and then you adjust to their adjustments.

[Q] Playboy: Are there hitters you admire?

[A] Schilling: Jeter's a winner. I loved the way Cal Ripken played. Scott Rolen, too.

[Q] Playboy: You've been active in the players' union. What's your view of major league owners?

[A] Schilling: I'm amazed that people so wealthy can keep getting such horrid legal advice, and that they keep following it.

[Q] Playboy: Their latest idea was contraction--eliminating two ballclubs.

[A] Schilling: How can they keep making stupid decisions that damage the sport? How can they keep trashing the players? That's like a retailer saying, "Hey, our product sucks and it's overpriced, but please buy it." And with a former owner as commissioner, you have a huge conflict of interest.

[Q] Playboy: You're not a Bud Selig fan.

[A] Schilling: Bud Selig doesn't care more about baseball than I do. This game is my life. I've played baseball since I was four. From a personal standpoint, I have more invested in the game than he'll ever dream of having.

[Q] Playboy: Is it annoying when fans say you're overpaid?

[A] Schilling: Yes! They seem to think that because we make so much money, we can't have values or opinions. We should just be grateful for the money. Of course it's preposterous for me to make $9.9 million more than my son's first-grade teacher. That's our system. A movie star can make twice as much to entertain you for two hours.

[Q] Playboy: When a guy makes $10 million a year, what's the number on his biweekly check?

[A] Schilling: It's direct deposit, but I see the number. It's six figures. I'm making $10 million this year, plus incentives, but I deferred some of it. I'll actually get half of that this year. I chose to get paid year-round, so it's $5 million divided by 26. That's about $200,000, minus taxes, every two weeks.

[Q] Playboy: What's your biggest indulgence?

[A] Schilling: I'm a model railroader, war-game player, computer nerd and memorabilia collector. I bought a 1927 Lou Gehrig jersey and the hat he wore in the 1927 World Series. I also collect World War II stuff--small infantry weapons, light machine guns. I have a garage full of ordnance. All the guys at my war-game company, Multi-Man Publishing, are World War II geeks, so I take any new stuff over to show them. Wouldn't it be funny if I got pulled over with a car full of weapons and ordnance? That's the lead story on Sports Center that night.

[Q] Playboy: What's your best military item?

[A] Schilling: I've got the beret that Montgomery wore in North Africa, though I'm not a big Montgomery fan. I don't think he was a great tactician, not a genius like Rommel, and I'm a Patton fan, too. Patton and Montgomery didn't like each other. Still, it's a fascinating piece. I have German and Russian uniforms, and some eerie stuff like an S.S. presentation dagger. When you joined the S.S. they gave you a dagger with a chain around the hilt, and the chain links are death's-heads.

[Q] Playboy: During the World Series, you spoke to rescue workers at ground zero. Some firemen handed you their cell phones so their kids could talk to you.

[A] Schilling: Those guys are the heroes. I was so moved that their children could get a smile because of me. That's powerful stuff. And it was funny, because those kids were real New Yorkers. First off, every one of them called bullshit on me: "You're not Curt Schilling!" I'd finally convince them and say I was sorry we were going to beat the Yankees. They'd say, "No way. They'll kick your ass!" Or if they were Mets fans it was, "Beat the crap out of the Yankees!"

[Q] Playboy: You met President Bush at the Series, where he threw out a ceremonial fastball.

[A] Schilling: He threw a good, strong strike--with a bulletproof vest on. I don't think I could do that.

[Q] Playboy: Did you vote for him?

[A] Schilling: No, I didn't. But I would now. I also like the people Bush relies on--Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell. I would vote for Colin Powell for president in a heartbeat.

[Q] Playboy: You're a serious military history buff. Is the war on terror winnable?

[A] Schilling: I think we'll end up in Iraq. What's scary is that we are fighting people who want to die for their religion. In a holy war, there's no out-of-bounds. Chemical weapons, nuclear weapons--that's what worries me.

[Q] Playboy: You were supposed to pitch on September 11th.

[A] Schilling: Shonda woke me up that morning. We saw the second plane live on TV. Gehrig watched it, too. That might have been a mistake, letting him watch with us. Two weeks later he came home from school with an art project, a picture of a plane hitting a building, with fire and graves. Shonda started welling up. So I sat down with Gehrig and we talked about it. We talked about good guys and bad guys, and he's fine. Gehrig is life incarnate. That kid's a pistol. I'll give you a Gehrig story: One day we're in a parking lot in Philly. I had taken him on one of my hospital visits. So we walk in front of a truck and the driver starts honking his horn, yelling and making hand signals at me. I said, "Don't you blare your fucking horn at me--I got my son here!" As we walk away, Gehrig says, "Why did you yell? You told me that when people are mean, you should just turn away." I knew he was right. But then he said, "It's OK, Dad. Big people make mistakes, too." My chest is still swelling with pride.

Today everybody wants to hit a home run and be on Sports Center. You have leadoff hitters striking out more than 100 times a year. I just love a guy who strikes out like that.

Bud Selig doesn't care more about baseball than I do. From a personal standpoint, I have more invested in the game than he'll ever dream of having.