Eagle-Tribune Blogs: Burt Talks Sports

Cross-promotion alert: Story in the Eagle-Tribune today has Curt Schilling talking about how his new venture, Green Monster Games, resulted an unusual offseason for him. He touches on what his schedule was and how he might have done things different.

“Sure, there were things I would have done differently the next time from a time management standpoint,” Schilling said of his offseason schedule. “But I learned. I showed up (at spring training) at a weight I wasn’t happy with, but I’m down six pounds and I’m about a pound under where I was at last season.”

In the story he explains that his throwing program never suffered. He used his lunch break at GMG to get his throwing in, often times with strength and conditioning coach Dave Page in attendance.

“I knew I had to keep going and I never missed a day. I threw more than anybody in this camp coming in here, except for maybe Daisuke (Matsuzaka). I threw three batting practices in the 10 days before I came down here, 20 minutes at a time, along with bullpens. I’m fine.”

Clck here to read my column on Schilling

Terry Francona is home sick again today.

Before Jacoby Ellsbury went out to become the center of attention by hitting off of Daisuke Matsuzaka yesterday, he stopped by to talk about the work he has done with new first base coach Luis Alicea, who also was Ellsbury’s Arizona Fall League coach. Ellsbury, specifically, is concentrating on his bunting, which the organization is emphasizing with the center fielder this year.

Ellsbury said they wanted him to bunt more last year at Portland, but he never felt comfortable enough to execute it on a regular basis.

My surreal television moment of the day: Watching a show called “Cheaters” last night, which has a camera crew and private investigators follow suspected cheaters in relationships. The victim in this case was an 88-year-old named Lightning McLeod, who was in a relationship with a 33-year-old. After they built their case against the woman (obviously finding she had been unfaithful to McLeod), the host of the show, a man named Joey Greco, a team of cameras, and a cane-wielding McLeod confronted the two. Things got a little feisty, with the older gentleman (whom Greco had called a “dashing young man” earlier in the episode waving his cane at the cheaters.

Then came the Hallmark moment when Lightning McLeod warned his younger no-good doer: “Watch out, I’ll strike twice!” I’ve got a feeling Lightning was using this same threat back in days of prohibition. Oh, and did I mention Lightning made a Mohawk out of whatever hair he had left?

Off to the field …

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