On Friday, I spoke with former MLB pitcher and current ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling about his transition to broadcasting, the Mets 13-3 start, their pitching staff and more. Here’s what he had to say…
Curt Schilling will be a part of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball coverage of the Subway Series.
Rich MacLeod: You were a star pitcher in this league for a number of years, potential Hall of Famer, and now you’re broadcasting games for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, how has that transition been like for you?
Curt Schilling: I think if you look back over my career I once again put the proverbial shoe in my mouth because I just remember an umpteenth number of times I was playing saying “I’m never gonna do that, I’ll never be that guy, I’m never gonna be in the media,” and well, now I am.
Even though I pontificate on a lot of things, one thing I know that I know is pitching and that’s what they’re asking me to do and I’m okay with that.
Rich MacLeod: You’re in the booth every week with Dan Shulman and John Kruk, and like players, broadcasters need to get a chemistry working too. How has that dynamic been for you?
Curt Schilling: John and I played together, we’ve know each other for 23 years and no disrespect to anybody else, I’m not sure I’ve seen anybody better at the job than Dan Shulman. Obviously he has the voice, the only thing I can actually rag him about is that he’s so damn good at what he does, he’s made it so easy for me. It’s not any different from when I played, guys that are really, really good at what they do are guys that pay attention and are sticklers for detail and that’s exactly what he is.
I spent a year in and out of the hospital with cancer and not one second of one minute has Disney or ESPN ever made me feel anything but comfortable. They were unbelievable last year, I had to force my way back because they wanted to give me as long as I needed.
Rich MacLeod: You guys have the Subway Series this week on Sunday Night Baseball and you’ve got the Mets at 13-3, 10-0 at home and on an 11-game winning streak, what are your thoughts about their hot start?
Curt Schilling: Obviously they’re playing teams that aren’t supposed to have a good season to begin with. All the anti-Mets people are jumping on saying, “oh, their schedule’s been soft,” but all you can do is play the schedule and play the games in front of you, and you know what–good teams win those games anyway.
Rich MacLeod: And we’ve seen the Mets in the past lose to the teams they’re supposed to beat.
Curt Schilling: Right, that’s what happens to a bad team, they go into a three-game series with a team that’s not very good and they end up winning one game because they just don’t have one of those pieces that you need. I said it in the offseason, I said it again this week, if there was a pitching coach job open in the big leagues, every job was open and I could pick one, it would be the New York Mets.
Rich MacLeod: Their pitching really has been the key to this season, especially when you have two aces in Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom. You’ve been a part of something similar, obviously to a higher extent, winning a World Series with Randy Johnson, do you see any comparisons between what you had with Randy Johnson and what the Mets might have with Harvey and deGrom?
Curt Schilling: Physically sure, they’re both power arms, they’re both swing and miss guys. I don’t know either one of them well enough to know, but I’m gonna assume that they’re a lot like RJ and I were.
They’re competing against each other in a good way and you ask Terry Collins, that’s a dream for a manager. Matt Harvey’s gonna take care of himself, he’s gonna do his work. I don’t know Jacob, but based on what I’ve seen he has a high baseball IQ. He’s gonna do his work, but when you get pushed by somebody that’s as good as you or better, and you’re already that good, it makes you go to a level you didn’t know you had. And that’s what I love.
Next year, you gotta throw in Zack Wheeler and all of these arms in too. Sandy Alderson’s a pretty smart dude, and I think they’re doing the opposite of what the Cubs are doing, which I think both work. [The Mets] are putting all the pitching together and they’ll go out and buy a bat, whereas I think the Cubs are putting all the bats together, this year they got Jon Lester and next year maybe Jordan Zimmermann. I fully expect those teams to be a lot of people’s National League champion, World Series champion picks next year.
Rich MacLeod: As for this year, it’s only 16 games into the season, a lot can happen, but do you think this Mets team has a chance to make the playoffs?
Curt Schilling: Absolutely. I’ll give you a little insight as a player, in 1993 with that Phillies team we knew we were the best team in baseball after the third game of the season. We went into Houston, they had signed Doug Drabek and Greg Swindell, they were the big boys on the block and in Game 3 Micky Morandini hits a home run, we win in extra innings, we sweep them and we knew.
16 games, I don’t care if it’s six games, what matters is the clubhouse makeup–they’re not gonna get too high, they’re not gonna get too low. Where they get dangerous is if they get some bravado and some confidence, I wouldn’t be shocked if they made the playoffs, because their pitching can carry them.
Rich MacLeod: Talking about the clubhouse and bravado, they’ve been a different team in that way ever since Spring Training. They’ve been more confident, they believe they can win every single day they show up to the ballpark. How can that make an impact?
Curt Schilling: That’s exactly where it starts.
On all of the teams I got to the postseason with over the years, we knew two weeks into camp that something special was happening. If the manager asks to brief the clubhouse, you’re not gonna win. If you’ve got a David Wright, if you’ve got a Darren Dalton (Phillies, 1993), if you’re got a Doug Mirabelli (Red Sox, 2004), when you have those players who’s roles are irrelevant, who will say anything to anyone, that’s unbelievably powerful and that’s the tipping point for me. They keep everyone in line, you don’t have to worry about the BS, and when you’re talking about New York or Boston or Philadelphia–there’s always sharks looking for blood in the water, that’s why you have to be different to do well there.
Part of what you do when you sign players to play there is the makeup of the player. There’s still four balls and three strikes, there are still three outs and still nine innings, but there are x-factors for playing in these places and that’s one of the things that makes me really look forward to seeing how Matt Harvey develops.
Rich MacLeod: You talked about confidence and how you have to be to make it in big markets. With the confidence this Mets team seems to have, do you think it’s at all possible that New York could become a Mets town?
Curt Schilling: I mean in 1986 it was. New York is about winning and if you don’t win they’re either gonna come and yell at you or not show up. That’s Philadelphia, that’s Boston, that’s a lot of, if not all of, the East Coast towns. That’s just the way it is and if you can’t handle that as a player you gotta go play somewhere else.
I always liked it because I always felt the fans were sort of a 26th man on the roster, you didn’t have to police your team much because the fans were gonna help you–if somebody was dogging it, if somebody did something stupid a lot of times you didn’t have to do much because the fans were gonna embarrass the hell out of them, anyways.
Rich MacLeod: Over the past few years people have said there hasn’t been much buzz to the Subway Series, but you’ve got both teams in first place and playing good baseball lately, do you think think the Subway Series still has juice to it?
Curt Schilling: God yes. That’s the dream, that the Mets and Yankees are both playing October baseball. No matter how they look today, the Yankees are always a potential October team and in the past they’ve proven that at the trade deadline they’ll do anything. The Mets are getting there and they could be there too.
The thing is the Mets have a plan, they’ve been following that plan, and they need to stay between the fair or foul lines on that plan. They cannot get caught up if something happens and they’re five games back at the break and they go out and try to get somebody to help win a pennant when they’re not ready. I think that’s one of the strengths for Sandy in his past, that Marine background is, “here’s my strategy, here’s my plan,” and it’s all about adapting once it’s set in motion. But the goal’s still the same. You may take a detour every now and then because of injuries–and that’s the thing, David and Travis d’Arnaud are gone right now, but when that happens, pitching picks up the hitting and vice versa.
Tune into ESPN on Sunday night at 8:05 PM ET for the final game of the Subway Series from Yankee Stadium.
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