Schilling breaks silence: Talks about his shoulder

Curt Schilling spoke to a group of reporters this morning, ending his spring training silence.

He said that he notified the team that something wasn’t right with his arm long before the press caught hold of it, but everyone involved kept quiet with the Santana trade on the table.

“I actually reached out to Theo when the Santana thing came out because I knew I was not in a good situation and I knew if we started to poke around medically word might get out and I didn’t know how much interest there was on our behalf. I didn’t want to put him in a disadvantage, a leverage situation disadvantage. So I reached out to him very quickly to John Farrell and to Tito and told them I was very concerned and didn’t want that to mess up their discussions with the Twins.”

He responded to the fans and members of the media who suggested that he knew he was hurt before he signed the $8 million contract.

“Let’s be clear, if some people want to believe this was me taking advantage of the situation financially I wouldn’t have done it here. I would have done it in at least two other places for $14 million. If I was going to sit my ass on the DL and collect a paycheck. I know that for a fact. People are going to believe what they believe. I was healthy at the time. I didn’t feel great, but I felt like I was 40 or 41.”

Though Schilling clearly sides with Dr. Morgan and disagrees with the team’s rehabilitation plans, he’s promised to dedicate himself to the process.

“If their course of action doesn’t work I don’t pitch this year, and I may never pitch again. I don’t have a choice. I have to mentally get behind it and do everything I can do to make it work. It certainly isn’t the best spot to be in. When you here 5 and 10 percent and never pitch again and those things. I’m disappointed that after 21 years my career might end like this. But it is what it is. And if I never pitch again, as disappointing as it may be, I have no regrets about everything that I’ve been able to experience.”

He said that he was silent for the first part of spring training not because of any problems with the front office, but because he didn’t want to take anything away from the team.

“I don’t want to be a distraction. It’s one of the reasons I put this part of it off because the goal to be defending world champs and win the World Series. I don’t want to screw that up. There are so many great stories, and so many good things going on here. I don’t want this to impede any of that.”

Schilling concedes that he will need to have surgery at some point, whether it comes before or after his baseball career ends.

“I will have to have the biceps procedure at some point in the very near future in my life if I want to live a pain-free, normal life.”

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