Free The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey With Asperger's Syndrome by Shonda Schilling, Curt Schilling Page A

going to the batting cage or on the field, Curt would take him into the room where the players relaxed, which was offlimits to anyone besides players and their kids. They’d hang out and play Xbox for a while, which was okay. Then when it came time for Curt to go to the training room or get ready for batting practice, he would walk Grant through the rules: no running around, no wandering, no touching other people’s stuff. Sure enough, thirty minutes later Curt would find him wandering around the training room, touching people’s things. Curt had always found it disrespectful when other players and their wives brought their kids to the clubhouse and let them roam and do whatever they wanted. He didn’t want to be that guy, or have Grant be that kid, but with Grant it felt like they were, which understandably made Curt more reluctant to take him there.
     
    W ATCHING YOUR TEAM PLAY again and again is not a hard thing to do when the team is winning, and that season we were winning. It was thrilling to be there. Curt made the AllStar team that year, and we went off to Houston. Then, before I knew it, the kids were heading back to school.
    We made it to the playoffs. The first round was against the California Angels. Not a lot of wives went on the road trip. I guess that’s what happens when you make it to the playoffs often—it’s not such a big deal. After two quick wins, we were back home. Next stop: the Yankees.
    Now it’s one thing to imagine that legendary, almost onehundredyearold rivalry from afar. It’s another to witness it with your own eyes. After the tragic 2003 American League Championship when the Yankees won in the bottom of the fourteenth inning on a home run, the Red Sox fans begged for the rematch. Me, I would rather have gone an easier route. Not to mention that the odds were not in our favor. It had been eightysix years since the Red Sox won a World Series. What was the chance that we’d come out on top?
    It was an exciting time to be in Boston, and it was fun to see my kids get swept up in the excitement generated by the Red Sox Nation. The playoffs, and the possibility of going to the World Series, were all they could talk about. Grant didn’t really know what to make of it all. He was just very concerned about making sure he had a Red Sox shirt to wear to school on Red Sox Spirit Day, like his teachers told him to. He was very glad he had something to wear for it. Of course, he didn’t realize that half his wardrobe was Red Sox gear. For him, the playoffs had another upside: They meant that he didn’t have to say goodbye for the winter to all his friends in the Red Sox playroom.
    The first three games did not get off to a good start, and just like that we were in the hole three games to none in the bestofseven series. Curt didn’t have a good start in the first game. He was having trouble with his ankle. One of his tendons was torn. By the time we went to New York, where he would pitch game six, his doctors had the crazy idea of sewing the tendon down to keep it from dislocating. No one had any idea whether or not it would work. He came back to our hotel room the night before he pitched, and I honestly thought I would throw up. He had these four big stitches on his ankle, and lord knows what they were attached to. The whole thing was puffy and had fresh wounds on it.
    “How in the world are you going to pitch?” I asked him.
    He just looked at me. Clearly, in his mind, there was no other choice. I couldn’t imagine any part of the body not being sore after it was cut open. Still, wounded foot or not, we both somehow felt incredibly calm when Curt left for the ballpark the next day. It was the calmest either of us had ever feltbefore a game. It was a sense of being in the zone, and knowing that when things are going well, anything can happen.
    Needless to say, Curt and the team delivered a magical night, but because I was up in the stands, it wasn’t until my sisterinlaw Allison called that