I feel the need to talk a little more about the standing ovation Curt received last night. Because more than anything…Curt’s poor performance, Terry’s poor use of the bullpen…the freaking LOSS…the thing that bothered me the most was the standing ovation for the guy who blew the game.
For the millionth time…I KNOW what Curt did for the team last October. But guess what? Keith Foulke did a lot for the team too. So did Mark Bellhorn. As a matter of fact, some might argue that Foulke and Bellhorn did MORE for the team than Curt did last post season…yet Foulke and Bellhorn got booed horribly by the "Fenway Faithful" almost every time they appeared this year. But not Curt. Curt gets a standing ovation for blowing the game. Knowing he didn’t have his stuff with six games left in the season…six games that actually MEAN something…and he stayed in there. And received a standing ovation for it.
Someone needs to explain this to me. And "after what he did for us last year he deserves a free pass" doesn’t cut it. I’m not asking the fans to boo him…I’m asking them to NOT reward a poor performance! I mean what does that say? "You’re Curt Schilling so we’ll love you no matter what YOU do! But YOU, YOU’RE Keith Foulke and we’ll hate YOU even though you practically threw your arm out helping the team win the World Series last year!"?
That "anonymous player" who complained about the fans treating Curt special last week was dead on right. And shame on Bob Hohler and Curt and Shonda for not seeing that the player wasn’t asking for Curt to be booed, he was wondering when playing poorly suddenly became a reason to cheer.
If we have to rely on Curt to get us into the post season on Sunday…and then rely on him to get us all the way through…maybe he needs to realize that stepping it up sometimes means stepping DOWN when you know you don’t have the right stuff.
Cheering him for doing poorly isn’t going to help him get his head together for the game, it just inflates and already over-inflated ego.
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