Schilling ready for a toss

Team's program was right, he says

DETROIT - It is a character trait Curt Schilling has displayed on other occasions over the course of his life, and yesterday he did it again.

He admitted he was wrong.

The Red Sox medical staff, he said, recommended the right course of treatment for his ailing right shoulder, which is why he will be playing catch for the first time this spring this afternoon.

Schilling had another little surprise for those who think he was determined to squeeze every cent out of the Sox even if he never throws another pitch: At his suggestion, he said, the team has dropped the weight clauses in his contract that could have tacked on an extra $2 million to his $8 million deal, and are reworking his deal so that he could earn the money through performance-based bonuses.

Schilling, you may recall, was convinced earlier this spring that he needed surgery, a procedure called biceps tenodesis, as recommended by his personal physician, Craig Morgan, who operated on his shoulder twice before and was responsible, Schilling said, for saving his career.

The Sox argued that such a procedure, which involved detaching the biceps tendon, never had been done on a big-league pitcher and likely would mean the end of his career.

Sox medical director Thomas Gill recommended a cortisone shot, then a program of rest and rehabilitation. A third-party physician called in agreed with the Sox.

Schilling reluctantly agreed to follow the program. Morgan predicted it had "zero" chance of succeeding.

Now, almost three months after the cortisone shot was administered, Schilling's shoulder is strong enough to test with ball and glove.

Does that mean the Sox were right?

"Yeah," Schilling said. "Nothing has happened in the last three months to lead me to believe they were wrong. But if this is a climb of a mountain, I'm still at the base of that mountain. But it certainly gives me some insight, a better feel of where I am physically. Until I start throwing, none of this is going to have any carryover."

Though today will have a "little Christmas morning feel to it - yeah, I'm excited," Schilling said it is still too early to know whether he will pitch again. And, if he doesn't, does that mean all the work he did to get to this stage was for naught?

"There are a whole lot worse situations," he said. "If I work this hard and don't get back to pitching, I'd be disappointed. But if I worked this hard and didn't get back to walking, you know what I'm saying? It's relative. Twenty-two years I've pitched professionally. I've been blessed."

The Sox have not put a timetable on when they expect Schilling to return. There have been vague mentions of maybe around the All-Star break.

"We're closer to the point," he said, "where we'll know whether this worked or not. Until we push it a little and I start throwing, we won't know."

Two for home team

Last weekend, the town of Medfield dedicated the Shonda Schilling Softball Field and Curt Schilling Baseball Field, named in honor of the residents who helped the town raise $450,000 of the $500,000 needed to renovate the fields. The softball field named in honor of his wife, Schilling knew about. The baseball field? That was a surprise, he said. Back in Arizona, he had a field named for him at his old school, where each winter he'd take a group of kids to work out. "But this is special," he said. "This is where our kids go to school and their friends go to school. Hopefully it will still be doing something positive in the community long after we're gone."

A sad story

Schilling's reaction to the ongoing saga of Roger Clemens, whom he once idolized? "Sad," he said. "My whole career, I've been a Roger fan. I certainly don't know him in the depth his teammates now and before know him. I argued before all this that he's the greatest pitcher who ever lived if everything was done on the level. But there's a lot of stuff on the table." Is it a cautionary tale? "This is just another piece of wrapping off that package people wrap [ballplayers] up in, that we're different, we're special," said Schilling. "We [mess] up the same things you do, we make the same mistakes, a lot of times we make worse ones because we have a lot more at our disposal to make our mistakes. I think a lot of it is people assume that because you have more, you want less. Obviously that's not the case for a lot of people. All of this stuff coming out, I don't know if it's just a feeding frenzy. It's at a time when you don't know what to believe. Do you believe some, all, none? How can you tell? That stuff just snowballs."

Dropping fast

Julio Lugo began the day ranked at the bottom of all defensive categories for big-league shortstops. He had the most errors (9), the lowest fielding percentage (.919), was last in assists per nine innings (2.36), and last in range factor (3.49). The rest of the Sox infield? Mike Lowell, Sean Casey, and Dustin Pedroia have one error apiece, Kevin Youkilis none. Most of Lugo's errors have come on routine plays, an indictment of his fundamental skills more than his athleticism . . . Pedroia shaved his head. "I was bored," he said . . . Casey was making his first appearance here since the Tigers told him he wouldn't be asked back last season. Of course, he was surrounded by the grounds crew and greeted them with smiles and handshakes and hugs. Casey, to the ESPN team that inquired about his health: "I feel quicker. It's a miracle."

Roster ins, outs

The Sox officially placed Brandon Moss on the 15-day DL (appendectomy) while adding reliever Craig Hansen, who gave up two runs in 1 2/3 innings with two walks . . . Bartolo Colon threw 19 pitches in two innings of an extended spring training game, another 16 in the bullpen, will come back here to be re-examined, and then is expected to pitch for Triple A Pawtucket Saturday.

Gordon Edes can be reached at edes@globe.com.