MLB WORLD SERIES: YANKEES v DIAMONDBACKS

November 3, 2001

Curt Schilling

CURT SCHILLING: No, I don't stand behind it? No. I back down. We're going to lose. (Laughter.) I've never taken the ball not expecting to win and I would assume if you asked Roger the same question, he would tell you he plans on winning tomorrow too.

CURT SCHILLING: I always want to stay in the game. Come on. I always want to stay in the game. Situations dictate what happens. I can't predict what it's going to be like in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings in tomorrow night's game.

CURT SCHILLING: Well, if you got all of the quotes you probably got mixed signals. Before, I said, I was spent. I thought that was actually in various papers. I told him I was tired and that I was spent, but, that I had another inning, and you know, it went from there. When I said that, he said, "That's enough." I said, "I can still go one more inning." We kind of dragged that had out a little bit, but that was the mixup. That was the mixed signal.

CURT SCHILLING: No. No. I said earlier today, if the Lord had sat me down in January of this year and asked me to script out a dream season, I could not have come up with this. I could not have come up with this. Game 7, against Roger Clemens, and everything that's happened, the way the year has gone for my family, the way the year has gone for this team, what Roger did for me and has done for me throughout my career, I could not have dreamt this. I'm not that big of a dreamer.

CURT SCHILLING: No, it didn't. It did not throb. I was sore in the night of the game after I came out and I was sore the next day, but you know, I've been sore during the season. But I certainly felt different than I did after Game 1. Over the last year, I've tried to mature a little bit in how I handle myself and the things that I say to the manager about how I feel, and I thought it was important that if I didn't say something to him the next day, I wasn't going to say anything, and as it turns out, it happened exactly the way I expected it to happen. I didn't feel real good, we played some more baseball, the game got farther away, but I got better and I feel fantastic tonight. I'm taking the ball for all it is worth tomorrow.

CURT SCHILLING: Pray. Wow, I don't know. I've never had one before. I will probably continue to watch a little bit of the last two starts to get some ideas of exactly -- of any adjustments. I pretty much feel like I know what the lineup is going to be, based on what's happened this series. I will probably play some computer games with my oldest son, play a little PlayStation football and try to take a real good sleeping pill and wake up and go get'em tomorrow.

CURT SCHILLING: The funny thing was, when we scored the eight running in the third inning I started breathing like I was pitching which was odd, because I realized it was probably going to happen. I started to get a little nervous about it. I don't know that I can describe it to someone that works in the print media. This might be like being in the essay finals against Hemmingway or a paint-off against Picasso. It's Roger Clemens. It's Roger Clemens and the Yankees, Game 7. Everybody that's ever played this sport at any level has had a whiffle ball in their hand at some point and said, it's the seventh game of the World Series and you're either pitching or hitting. How cool is that?

CURT SCHILLING: Very. I don't have take the ball not being confident. I think what I said before the game stands -- I believed before the game, I said if we could get by tonight, we would win the World Series. I believe that. I really believe that.

CURT SCHILLING: No, because I thought it was a story you guys screwed up. I didn't think that we screwed it up. When you have in the neighborhood of 100 to 250 print media in the locker room and 75 of them walk up in the middle and start writing quotes, they screw up it up. The people that stood there from the beginning got it right; I told him I was tired, but I had another inning. The people that were at my locker the whole time got all of those quotes right. The ones that were not there and walked in halfway were the ones that screwed the story up. You guys were the ones that gave him the hard time. And not one of you has managed a big league game, but you have the ability to write something after the fact and sit there it and ponder what you would have done. That's not something that a manager can do in a big league game. That's a luxury that you have and he doesn't. I thought it was bad reporting. He made the right move; it just didn't work out.

CURT SCHILLING: The day I pitch is usually pretty quiet. I know my wife does not talk to me a lot.

CURT SCHILLING: Those things all enter into it at some point. He's never far away, anyway, when I am thinking about things like this and situations like this. You know, he'd almost be giggling, I believe, right now, just laughing that it's here and he'd be pretty fired up about it.

CURT SCHILLING: "Don't lose." He was pretty simple about stuff like that. The ball is in my hand and I have control of my own destiny tomorrow.