Staff Blog
A Tale of Two Pitchers, or the Schilling/Grimsley trade revisited
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| WHAT'S UP SKINNY MAN? Grimsley, apparently pre-HGH. |
In April of 1992, the Philadelphia Phillies traded a struggling young pitcher with all kinds of potential to the Houston Astros for their struggling young pitcher with all kinds of potential. The deal was famous (or infamous, depending on your bent) in that it netted the Phils one Curtis Montague Schilling in exchange for one Jason Alan Grimsley. It's funny, if not particularly instructive, to look at their career paths. Following the trade, Schilling, under the tutelage of then Phillies pitching coach Johnny Podres, put everything together, and after a brief stint in the Phils' bullpen morphed into the innings-eating strike-out machine he remains to this day. Grimsley never pitched for the Astros big league squad and was released in 1993 and mostly bounced from second-division team to second-division team, his career highlight coming as a gun out of the bullpen for Joe Torre's 1999 World Champion New York Yankees.
Schilling pitched in three World Series following the trade (winning two) and famously helped end Boston's championship drought. He's famous for the bloody sock. People line up to play Everquest online with him.
Grimsley was a bit part in two World Series teams (he was also on the 2000 Yankees, but did not pitch in that team's victory over the Mets). Today, people line up to read about him on TheSmokingGun.com, as yesterday federal agents raided his home in a federal steroid probe after getting busted in an April sting for accepting a $3,200 shipment of Human Growth Hormone. In the Smoking Gun documents, Grimsley apparentely fingers other users, though the names are redacted. Ah, what they must thing of the Grims reaper in Scranton right about now. But I guess we shouldn't be too surprised, given Grimsley's part in "rescuing" Albert Belle's confiscated corked bat by climbing through the ceiling to the umpires' locker room and switching the offending bat with a legal one. Sell your Grimsley collectors items NOW.
Thanks to Jon
