How can I say goodbye to what we had? The good times outweighed the bad.

Remember how, after the end of the 2007 season, Curt Schilling left letters for certain teammates in their lockers?* Remember how Jason Varitek refused to read his because Schill wasn't officially retired and could very well re-sign with the Red Sox? (Okay, that one might be something we made up. We're not 100% sure. Just go with it.) Well, we like to imagine the following text message showed up on Tek's phone late last night:

Read the letter.**

All of which is our way of saying that Curt Schilling is many things, all of them contradictory, but for a while there he was ours. And, in some ways, he always will be. We will miss seeing him pitch every fifth day--even when we decidedly do not miss Tito keeping him in one inning too long--and we will always, always think of him standing on that mound in Yankee Stadium, ankle stapled together, silencing the ghosts.

Thank you, Schill. Have a wonderful retirement (and please do shut up).


*We'd link, but that would require actual effort, and we are vehemently anti-effort on Mondays.

**Or, you know, rd teh ltr. We wouldn't put it past Big Schill to use textspeak.