TSN: Schilling ponders partial-season return in 2009

Damn...teams will be lining up around the bloody sock.

Red Sox righthander Curt Schilling told Sporting News that he won’t come back and pitch a full season, but he hasn’t ruled out pitching for part of next season.

“If I do decide to come back, I would work to the point I was ready and somewhere around May 1 let the teams know I wanted to pitch the second half. I’d obviously need to spend June in the minor leagues building it all back up and then hopefully come back and help a team in contention win a World Series,” Schilling said. “All of this is predicated with the fact that I am completely healthy and able to pitch like I did prior to breaking my shoulder early in 2007.”

..."This final year, if you can call it that, so much happened that left a bad-to-bitter taste in my mouth that I just am not sure. So much was and has been said about me by people that have no idea what has transpired over the past 12 months, and that bothers me. What I do know is in the past 23 years I’ve never gone through a winter and not had specific dates where I began to get ready for camp. I am wondering if that will be a change or if like much of the rest of this, I’ll hit those dates and feel no different.”