Thanks a lot, Theo!

Theo Epstein is a big fat stupid idiot. While the rest of the country was stuffing turkey, pumpkin pie, and well, stuffing down their pie holes with their own families, the nine-year-old general manager of the Red Sox spent Thanksgiving with the Schilling family in Arizona.

Unless you've been living in a cave with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar (recently spotted in a Pakistani mosque), or you missed page 18 of yesterday's Daily, the Diamondbacks' ace waived the no-trade clause in his contract and packed his bags for Beantown.

So screw you, Theo. The last column of the semester, and I have to write about this? So far, I've written about video games, rodeos, and beard competitions -- basically anything besides real, legitimate sports, and I thought I could get out of the semester with that streak intact.

But noooo. I could have used this space to write about the death of Gertrude Ederle (the first woman to swim the English Channel), last week's British Wheelchair Sports Awards, or this week's $205,000 CITGO Bassmaster Open fishing competition, but somebody thinks he can break the curse of the freakin' Bambino.

I could have even used this space to rant about the Lakers' 99-77 humiliation of the Pacers on Sunday night, and how my high school team would put up more of a fight against the Western Conference than any NBA team in the East.

Thanks to little Theo, though, there ain't nothin' but Schill on the sports radar. Any sports website or newspaper page in the country looks pretty much like this: Schill, Schill, Schill, Schill, Schill, Schill, Schill. Oh yeah, and then some 20-word brief about the Kobe trial.

So since I don't really have a choice on the topic, I might as well start the column, seeing as though I'm already 302 words in.

First of all, hear this, Bostonia: Curt Schilling will not take you to a World Series.

What's that, you say?

Here it is again: Curt Schilling will not take you to a World Series.

Screw Theo? Hogwash, you say. Screw Brian! How could Schilling possibly fail? After all, this guy tag-teamed with the 6'10" Big Mullet down in the desert to go medieval on the Evil Empire in the 2001 Series, so playing second fiddle to Pedrito "Blame Grady" Martinez should be no problem.

Not only that, you say, but the short fences at Fenway should be no problem even though Curt's a fly ball pitcher. I mean, come on, he had to deal with a retractable roof opening and closing every five minutes whenever it started to sprinkle in Arizona.

Plus, Schill's a student of the game, a real player's player, so he'll appreciate the history and mystique that goes with playing in Boston. All the Diamondbacks have for tradition is a few gloves and throwbacks on loan from Cooperstown in the Cox Gallery in Bank One Ballpark.

Yeah, and one more thing, you say: Boston fans kick Arizona fans' collective ass. How can a bunch of tourists, golf pros, and retirees from Scottsdale possibly compare with the third-generation Sox fans who pack Yawkey Way?

Well here goes, morons.

El Curto was actually drafted by the Bo Sox in the second round in 1986, which means he'll be coming home -- oh wait, he didn't get to play a game in the bigs with the Sox before being traded to the Orioles in 1988 with Brady Anderson for Mike Boddicker.

If he was drafted in 1986, that means that he's been hurlin' from the mound for as long as most kids here have been out of diapers. The dude just turned 37! If he exercises his option for a third year in Boston, he'll be 40. Not only that, he's coming off an 8-9 season where he gave up only one less walk (32) in 168 innings than he did the previous year (33) in 259 innings.

In 1991, Schilling, Steve Finley, and Pete Harnisch were shipped off to the Astros for Glenn Davis, and in 1992, Schilling was traded to the Phillies for Jason Grimsley. In the middle of the 2000 season, the Phills sent Schill to Arizona for Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Travis Lee, and Vicente Padilla.

Schilling's arrival in Boston, then, will be the first time he's played for an American League team since 1990. In his three seasons in Baltimore, he went 1-6 with an average ERA of 6.2.

His new AL surroundings will present another problem -- the pitchers don't bat. Not that Schilling was awesome with the lumber himself (he hit only .150 over 13 seasons -- which, by the way, puts Nomar's post-season numbers to shame), but he'll have to face an actual batter instead of a lanky southpaw one extra time through the lineup.

In addition, his first and only year with the Astros (3.81 ERA) and his first year with the Diamondbacks (3.69 ERA) were statistically the worst years of his career. So if the Sox got Schilling to win now (which they did) they may be disappointed. Add to all this the fact that all the Red Sox have in the bull pen is Mike Timlin (just re-signed) and Byung Hyun Kim (who couldn't close a revolving door), and you get the picture that Theo's time was sadly misspent.

Oh yeah, and Schilling's middle name is Montague.