I blame some of this on numb bad luck. I think most Red Sox fans (certainly this Red Sox fan) were counting on Father Curt to bring the team back from Yankee Stadium with a split. Now it turns out that Schilling’s ankle problem is not a mere tweak, not even a strain, but (oh shit) a probable season-ending injury that will need surgery.

We all know both from gospel music and basic first-year anatomy that the knee-bone connected to the leg-bone and the leg-bone connected to the ankle-bone. The problem here, as I understand it, has to do with the peroneal tendon, where the ankle-bone connected to the foot-bone, can you give me hallelujah. In Schilling’s case, this tendon has come free of its sheath. When pushing off on his right leg during Game 1, Father Curt said he could actually hear the tendon snapping as it rubbed against the bone. Later, when speaking to the press, Sox doc Bill Morgan said additional pitching wouldn’t put Schilling’s leg at risk, and I’m thinking: He can hear that thing snapping like a garter every time he hucks the pill and you say he’s not risking his leg? Jeezis, Doctor Bill, I’m sorta glad you don’t make house calls in my neighborhood.

Well, let it pass. What it boiled down to was a piece of rotten luck (not a curse—I may not be a conventional Christian, but I was raised a Methodist) for the appetizer. The main course was a mostly excellent pitching performance by Pedro Martinez in which his teammates provided exactly two hits (the second by David Ortiz, who was promptly erased on a double play). After the game, Pedro shrugged and said: “If my team doesn’t get the hits, I can’t do nothing.” He said it softly, without rancor. I thought he showed remarkable restraint, considering the fact thathe has been in this position in most of the games he’s pitched this year. Schilling—even in the ALCS game he left trailing 6–0—gets run support. For some reason Martinez does not.

A downcast Johnny Damon echoed the erstwhile Dominican Dominator in a locker-room interview, saying that Red Sox pitching hasn’t been the problem in the ALCS; the problem has been lack of offense. No one is better qualified to speak to this issue than Johnny D, who has gone 0 for 8 in the two games. In my mind it is at this point the crucial difference between the two clubs.