The home team

MEDFIELD - You walk into the spacious foyer of the Schilling home and immediately notice boxes and boxes stacked up against one wall. What, have they already started packing, before the pennant race even gets underway? Before Curt throws his first pitch tonight against the Indians?

Shonda Schilling shakes her head. "Those are baseballs for Curt to sign. Do you know how long it will take him?"

It has been nearly four years since Theo Epstein sat down for Thanksgiving dinner at the Schillings' home in Paradise Valley, Ariz., and closed a deal that brought No. 38 east, to Fenway Park. A hungry Red Sox Nation was salivating for a World Series win, and Schilling came through, cementing his place in baseball history with a vicious fastball and a bloody red sock.

Since arriving in Boston, the Schillings have become a power couple - raising millions of dollars for charity, educating the public about melanoma and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, taking to the airwaves, blogging, making guest appearances, signing autographs, participating in pledge events, and donating out of their own pockets. They've won numerous public service awards, and Shonda has been awarded honorary doctorates from Merrimack and Framingham State colleges.

"I don't know if we had defined goals when we came here," Curt says. "I think we wanted to try to make a difference, and I think we have. We did what we could." He adds: "We haven't really done it. The fans here have dived in head first with their time and money."

In four years, they've raised $2.5 million to combat ALS, the degenerative disease that killed Yankees great Lou Gehrig. They've raised another $1 million for sun safety education through their Shade Foundation, which they founded after Shonda was diagnosed with melanoma in Arizona.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, they brought a homeless family of nine to Massachusetts and paid for their housing for a year; they remain close friends. In their hometown of Medfield, the Schillings participated in an Extreme Makeover for a family with a disabled son and helped raise $60,000 for Spinal Muscular Atrophy in an "extreme yardsale."

And Schilling's Chardonnay - produced by a small Chilean vineyard - raised nearly $130,000 for ALS causes, outselling Manny's Merlot and Wakefield's Caberknuckle.

Then there's the group home for children in New Hampshire. Right before Christmas last year, the Schillings and their four children drove up and spent an afternoon there. "They threw an unbelievable bash for the kids, and it was such a busy time of year for them," says Lou Catano, director of Webster House in Manchester.

Shonda also discovered her inner jock in Boston, running in three marathons to raise money for Shade, and cycling in three Pan-Mass Challenges to raise money for the Jimmy Fund and three "Positive Spins" to raise money for ALS.

"Everyone's asked if I'm going to do another Boston Marathon," Shonda says. "But the truth of the matter is if we're not here, I probably won't have a number."

Making it home

The question of where the Schillings will be after this season looms large as he becomes a free agent. They'd love to stay in Boston, but unless he and the Red Sox agree on a contract, they'll move on.

Their children, ranging in age from 5 to 12, are happily ensconsed in the Medfield public schools, where Shonda volunteers: "I'm the party parent for the kindergarten room," she says, laughing. Their oldest son, Gehrig, plays Pop Warner football. And last year Curt started a $65 million gaming software business in Maynard named 38 Studios. In the offseason he's there at 8 a.m. every day.

The children do not want to move. Shonda says: "The kids love school, and they love their friends." The Medfield schools are so much better than those in Arizona, the Schillings say, that when they used to spend the off-season in Phoenix, the children would be six months ahead of the curriculum, only to return to Medfield in the fall and be six months behind.

In Medfield, Shonda, 39, says that for the first time in years she has met a group of close women friends. "We call ourselves the Lunch Bunch. It's therapy," she says. Indeed, following Schilling's ace pitching last week against the Angels, neighbors erected a large wooden sign at the end of their street: "How Sweep It Is! Way to Go, Curt!"

Jennifer Ouimette, whose kids play with the Schilling children, has become a close friend. "Shonda coaches softball and basketball, she helps with money for small-town sports, she volunteers in the classroom. She makes me laugh and she inspires me. That's why I'm here," she said at a recent "Say It With Flowers" fund-raiser for ALS.

The Schillings clearly have made a life here, one they say they love dearly and hate to leave. But their sprawling estate, purchased from former Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe for $4.5 million, is on the market, and their plans are up in the air. "Boston is our first choice, but we understand it's very much a business," says Curt, who on a recent night appears relaxed in jeans and a "38 Studios" T-shirt. "Maybe [the team] doesn't involve me next year. We hope it does, but we have to be prepared if it doesn't."

This year, the Red Sox paid Schilling $13 million, but it's unlikely management will offer that kind of money next year. Asked what it would take to get him to stay here, Shonda replies: "Winning a World Series is on our minds now. We will think about that after the season."

But one thing is certain: He will not, he says, play for the Yankees. Ever. "Because I played here," he says simply. "I made my choice a couple of years ago. It's like the Hatfields and McCoys, and once you pick a family . . . I can't see switching sides here."

Even if the Yankees offered him a fabulous deal, like Johnny Damon? "I don't have to play for top dollar," he says. "Something near top dollar is still an extraordinary amount of money."

If they do leave, Shonda says she would prefer a National League team - "so we don't have to play against the Red Sox."

Online connection

An inveterate blogger who likes the Internet connection with fans, Schilling says he has less time these days to devote to 38pitches.com, where he used to break down every single Red Sox game. Nowadays he also uses his blog to promote his fledgling company to other computer gaming fans.

Schilling, 40, is a huge fan of massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft. On the road, he takes a laptop, and "that's pretty much what I do." Sometimes, his kids will get online and play the game with him. "It's kind of the way we hang out when I'm not here," he says, as he tells 5-year-old Garrison that, no, he cannot have cotton candy until after dinner and chides his barking Rottweiler, Patton. The household also includes an ori pei named Rufus; a turtle, Doofus; and a hamster named Sox.

His new business, which expects to release its first game within two years, was born after a financial adviser told Schilling that in retirement he should put his money where his passion is. Shonda's parents work at 38 Studios, her mother in human resources, her father as a "jack of all trades." The couple had moved to Boston - as they had to Phoenix - to help with the children.

In Phoenix, the Schillings had a sprawling Spanish-style stucco house with red tile roof and lots of neighbors the kids could play with. Here, they live in a stately, three-story home set among 27 wooded acres, with a gate that requires visitors to punch a keypad. The Schillings admit to feeling a bit isolated but say that security reasons prevented them from living in a "normal neighborhood."

Fans have rung the doorbell to ask for an autograph, and others have stopped the Schilling children as they've arrived home from school. "There have been people who have shown up here meaning no ill will . . . and people who showed up and did not mean well," Schilling says.

Both he and Shonda grew up on blocks where kids played with one another all day: she in a row house in Baltimore, he "in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Phoenix." To make up for their lack of a neighborhood here, the Schillings make an effort to have their house filled with kids, for sleepovers, pool parties, movies in their home theater, and Halloween parties. Last year, Curt was Darth Vader, Shonda was Princess Leia.

Are his children's friends intimidated by him? "Some are," he says, "but some are like, 'So what?' " He adds: "I want my daughter's friends who are male to be intimidated by me forever!"

New England pride

Though they liked Arizona, the Schillings say they appreciate Boston values. Gehrig, 12, told them that he didn't like the way people treated each other out in Phoenix. "It's more about what you have out there," Shonda says. "People here care more about education."

Curt, who grew up in Phoenix, expounds at length on what he calls "the East Coast mentality" that reveres family, traditions, and history. "It's very community-oriented here. There's a focus on your town, your neighborhood, New England. People are really proud of where they come from. There's a couple hundred years of tradition built into everything here."

About those fans: Though the Schillings had some notion of The Nation before they came here, they still weren't prepared. "It's a 365-day, 12-month-a year, 24/7 kind of passion here," he says. Though he mostly appreciates it, he sometimes feels "like a monkey in the zoo" when he's out with his family.

Still, he considers himself lucky to be nearing retirement in Boston: "Getting to be at the end of a career in this environment . . . I thank God I had a chance to experience this before I was done because this is nothing like anything else."

Schilling, who says he's always nervous before a game, has a couple of routines he follows. He still leaves a ticket for his father at every game even though Cliff Schilling has been dead for nearly 20 years. "Someday, when I have a chance to be with him and talk to him, he will know I never forgot who, what, why, where I was," says Curt, who became a Christian 10 years ago. "He was an unbelievable man."

And he still lets his kids pick out the boxers he wears on the mound. A favorite pair has a duck on the back and the words "butt quack."

November is a big month for the Schillings. Shonda turns 40, Curt 41, and they will celebrate 15 years of marriage. Then there's Thanksgiving. In her Medfield home, Shonda pauses in front of a framed cartoon of that fateful dinner with Theo Epstein four years ago that brought the Schillings east. "I wish," she says, laughing, "that I could entice Theo with another dinner this Thanksgiving."