Curt Schilling Slams ESPN for Editing Him Out of Red Sox Doc

Ex-pitcher thinks “Bloody Sock Game” was omitted from reairing of “Four Days In October” due to his recent firing

ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling
Getty Images

Curt Schilling isn’t done blasting his former employer. On Sunday night, he accused ESPN of deliberately editing him out of an airing of a documentary about the 2004 Boston Red Sox, to which Schilling was a major contributor.

“Wow, full one year complete fabrication to defame greatest QB, now omitting about 4 hours of a game I think I played in. Hmm,” Schilling posted to Twitter on Monday.

The documentary, “Four Days In October,” retold the story of the Red Sox comeback against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series after losing its first three games. In Game 6, Schilling was the starting pitcher and led the team to victory despite a torn tendon sheath in his ankle. His performance is known as as the “Bloody Sock Game,” named for the blood stain left on Schilling’s sock from the injury.

Sunday’s airing of “Four Days In October” took place on ESPN2 after a college softball game that ran long. In a statement, ESPN claimed that the network edited the documentary to keep its run time within the existing time slot. The documentary was likely aired to coincide with a live Yankees-Red Sox telecast that was scheduled to start on the main channel immediately following the documentary’s time slot.

“When a live event runs long, it’s standard procedure to shorten a taped program that follows,” said ESPN. “In this case, we needed to edit out one of the film’s four segments to account for the extra length of the softball game.”

Despite the network’s explanation, Schilling claimed on Twitter that ESPN deliberately edited out the “Bloody Sock Game” to spite him following his recent dismissal from ESPN. Other Red Sox fans joined in on the attack against ESPN.

On the other hand, some sports media experts removed from the controversy don’t see any reason for ESPN to carry out any kind of vendetta.

Comments