Heads began to spin earlier this week when Curt Schilling said during an interview with ESPN Radio that a member of the Boston Red Sox organization encouraged him to use performance-enhancing drugs back in 2008. Most of us assumed the revelation would lead to a major investigation from Major League Baseball, but as it turns out the matter was already addressed — more than four years ago.
What Schilling didn’t mention in his interview is that he informed then-general manager Theo Epstein that the Red Sox employee — who has since been dismissed — suggested he use steroids to recover from an injury.
“Our office was notified,” MLB vice president Pat Courtney said Thursday, via the Boston Globe. “We take any report like this seriously and there was an investigation.”
Schilling told the Globe’s Peter Abraham that “two or three” investigators from the MLB went to speak to him at the time, and two baseball sources confirmed that the person no longer works for the team. The Red Sox have made several changes to their medical staff over the years, but none were believed to be a direct result of the 2008 investigation.
“I don’t remember who they were,” Schilling said. “I was trying to downplay the whole thing because I wasn’t playing at the time and I didn’t want to cause any problems in the clubhouse. Had I known Theo was going to report it to MLB, I would have never said anything. I was kind of mad that he had to do that.”
From the sound of it, Epstein and the Red Sox handled the situation exactly the way they should have. Schilling confirmed that the incident he spoke of on Thursday was the same one that was already addressed in 2008, which makes the story far less earth-shattering. Given his history of backtracking on topics and his passion for creating drama, you have to wonder if Schilling intentionally left out the fact that this is something the Red Sox have already taken care of. Now, all the headlines that read “Schilling: Red Sox told me to take steroids” don’t seem all that fair.
