Poor, poor Curt Schilling

Not since the days of my abysmal -- and brief -- Little League career, have I seen a ballplayer sob following a regular season loss. Curt is kinda pathetic.

Perhaps no one understood that more than Schilling. His big-game reputation took a huge hit on this night, to the point where a distraught Schilling had to be consoled on the bench by pitching coach Dave Wallace at the end of the game, as he couldn't bring himself to leave the dugout.

By the time Schilling met the media afterward, he had pulled himself together, and he was only too willing to take the blame, saying, "This game falls right on top of me." But maybe he carried the big-shoulders bravado a bit too far, saying this was a game that could turn the Sox's season around.

Huh?

"It's frustrating," Schilling said, "because we played a game tonight that we should have been playing all year and we haven't been. We were tenacious, we played with intensity, we did all the things we should have been doing. If we play like this every night for the rest of the season, we're going to go to the World Series.

Yes, really, the grown man was sobbing uncontrollably last night.

Now, I'm not gonna gloat and I ain't gonna write the Sox off for October -- if they make the post-season, a staff of Schilling, Pedro, and Wakefield will be instant favorites in a short series.

But, really, the more things change in Boston, the more they stay the same.