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More Boston props

Curt Schilling’s ready to go on Sunday. And he’s looking forward to going to some parades in Boston over the next 10 years.

In his weekly radio appearance on WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan show, Schilling said he learned some hard lessons about what he needs to do in the off-season, but was upbeat about the progress he’s made during his rehab stint and the new regimen for his shoulder and arm. Over three rehab starts with Pawtucket (the last of which came last night), Schilling pitched 15 innings, during which he fanned 18 and did not allow either a walk or a run. He will return to the Red Sox rotation on Sunday in Seattle.

“I told all the coaches I was going to throw first-pitch curve balls to left-handers, to start changing my pattern, changing my routine,” said Schilling. “I think I ended up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 out of 35 first-pitch curveball strikes in three starts, which is as good, if not better than my fastball, but what I noticed was an immense amount of difference in the reaction to my fastball.”

Schilling wasn’t expecting such dramatic results so quickly.

“I feel different, there’s no question,” Schilling said. “I feel vastly different than I did six weeks ago. I know there are going to be people who are going to go back and say, ‘Well, you showed up heavy in camp and blah, blah,’ that wasn’t the reason. I did not do the things I needed to do for my shoulder this year, and I paid for it, and my teammates and the team paid for it.

“Thank God that Kason [Gabbard] did what he did, and Julian [Tavarez] did what he did, and really did as well as I could have done while I was here, but I learned a lesson. Unfortunately it’s not always easy. I have no excuse for it. It’s something that will never happen again.”

Schilling also spoke about the changing landscape of Boston professional sports.

“I really think there’s a bigger picture thing happening here, speaking as an athlete that was part of it, you had a guy who had Boston on his no-trade list [in Eric Gagne], actually, I think wanting to come here,” Schilling said. “And you start to look at the [Kevin] Garnett thing, and Boston has turned itself into a place professional athletes want to play, and you look at the Patriots, and what the Celtics did, and this move and that’s happened over the last couple of years, it’s exciting to be here at a time when this city is really changing what it is perceived to be from a global standpoint. I think that’s a pretty incredible thing.”

The Sox pitcher talked about how different Boston was perceived before he joined the team in 2004.

“As a visiting player, this was a horrible place, horrible clubhouse, vicious fans,” said Schilling. “Things are changing, and I think that’s an incredibly exciting thing to watch, and witness, and be a part of. This is a town that has a chance to literally have two or three parades a year for the next decade.”