Mike Celizic

If that is red paint and not the blood of a hero on Curt Schilling’s iconic sock, then P.T. Barnum would approve. But there are sure to be plenty of people in our hypermoralistic times who will scream bloody — so to speak — murder about what they will see as an affront to the integrity of everything that’s sacred.

Screw ‘em.

I don’t care if it’s blood, paint or tomato paste on the sock. It’s easy enough to find out, although no one has yet shown a sufficient grasp of the obvious to take a few fibers from the sock and test them. (I’d have thought that would have been the first thing the Hall of Fame would have done. If you’re going to display a relic of the game, you ought to know if it’s authentic.)

We’re not talking about the Shroud of Turin. You don’t need a letter with a wax seal from an archbishop to touch it. But even if you did test it, what difference would it make?

Schilling pitched an incredible game while wearing it in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. And there was reason enough for his ankle to bleed: he’d had a loose tendon sutured to his skin to keep it from sliding across the bone and causing excruciating pain. The sutures might have bled.

They might not have. But they were still there and Schilling still pitched with that injury. And it was still heroic, at least as heroism is defined in athletics.

Gary Thorne, for whom I have enormous respect both as a broadcaster and as a person, said that the Sox’ back-up catcher in that series, Doug Mirabelli, confessed that Schilling painted the red blob on the sock, figuring it was good PR. Mirabelli denies he said that, although I can guarantee you that if Thorne said Mirabelli said it, then that’s what happened. And I wouldn’t put it past Mirabelli to have lied to Thorne in the first place. He’s a back-up catcher, and such people frequently have deliciously twisted senses of humor.

And we already know that Schilling’s mind doesn’t run in familiar ruts, either. So he certainly could have conceived of painting his sock red, just for fun. Given the willingness of the media to believe anything — remember Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch? — he could even assume that no one would ask to actually inspect the sock to see if it was wet blood or dried paint. And if they had, so what? It’s still a good story.

Once upon a time, such stories were easier to come by. That was in the days before everything was electronically recorded and people enjoyed a little mythology with their box scores.

We got the "Win one for the Gipper" story that way, and people believe it still, even though those almost certainly weren’t George Gipp’s last words, just the ones that Knute Rockne found it convenient to attribute to him.

Then there’s Babe Ruth’s famous "called shot" against the Cubs in the 1932 World Series. People still argue about whether he actually pointed at the bleachers, predicting his home run. He probably didn’t, but it’s a better story if he did, so we go with it.

And, of course, there’s that shroud in the cathedral in Turin. That’s actually been tested and shown to be more than 1,000 years younger than it would have to be to have been Christ’s burial garment. But people still insist it is. Why? Because it’s a better story.

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Schilling’s sock isn’t that holy, even if it is enshrined in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. So if a test revealed Sherwin Williams instead of hemoglobin, that would be the end of it. If I ran the Hall, I’d keep it anyway. The story was that good.

People aren’t any less gullible today than they used to be. If they were, psychics and astrologers would be out of business. There’s just a lot more ways to test things to show up the frauds.

Not that I’d elevate painting a sock to the level of "fraud." It’s not like lying on his resume or running a Ponzi scheme. If he did paint the sock, it’s more of a prank than anything else —

a practical joke.

And a great one it would be. The reason for that is that it is entirely credible. He had just taken the sutures and it was plausible that under the strain of pitching they would leak.

But you didn’t need actual blood to emphasize how remarkable Schilling’s performance was.

"What we're going through today as a nation, you hate to use a word like heroic on the field, but what Schill did that night on the sports field was one of the most incredible feats I ever witnessed," his manager, Terry Francona told the AP.

Amen.