Maybe it’s because I have a big scar on my ankle and like giving unsolicited opinions, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Curt Schilling.

Of course, Schilling, having played an important role in the only Boston Red Sox world championships in my lifetime, might have had something to do with it, too.

Schilling likely threw his final pitch for the Boston Red Sox in the 2007 World Series. He probably threw the last strike of his career, too. One would think a guy with his intelligence and, ahem, self-confidence would understand that there is little to be gained by trying to come back from major shoulder surgery in one’s early 40s. A comeback by Schilling at this point would be a rather transparent attempt to pad his Hall of Fame resume. The biggest knock against his case for enshrinement is his low victory total – 216.

I’m quite ambivalent to Schilling’s Hall chances. I made an unsuccessful pitch for Luis Tiant a couple of years ago and that didn’t work (although my presentation for the Patriots’ Andre Tippett in an earlier edition of the Sun Journal apparently swayed some of the voters). Frankly, I’m through pleading athletes’ cases for the Hall of Fame until Brian Scalabrine comes up for election in another 10 years or so.

If there is a place for Schilling in Cooperstown, good for him. But honestly, getting a plaque nailed to a wall in a little farming town in upstate New York that wasn’t even the birthplace of baseball is kind of overrated. There are countless players whose names and stories have been engraved into baseball history without ever getting a single vote from the members of the Baseball Writers of America, and not just because they’ve been banned, a la Pete Rose.

When he does officially call it quits, Schilling will be the honored guest of not one, not two, but three different teams – the Philadelphia Phillies, Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. I’m not sure whether the Phils and D’backs have their own franchise Halls of Fame. The Red Sox do, but Schilling likely will be enshrined in all three, if they exist.

Not that that holds the esteem of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but there’s something to be said for being able to walk into a bar in three major American cities and have people shove each other out of the way to be the first to buy you a beer (provided Schilling manages not to offend the fan base in one or all of those cities in the interim). There’s also something to be said for being one of those athletes whose life would be in danger if he set foot in a New York City bar.

Schilling elicits such strong emotions not just because he’s got a big mouth, but because he backed up that big mouth when it mattered most. Consider the 11-2 postseason record, which is one of the biggest points in his favor for enshrinement. Then consider the bloody socks he wore in two of those victories. A lot of people seriously believe the socks were painted with food coloring or ketchup or some other inhuman substance.

A lowly journeyman wouldn’t bring so many Oliver Stones out of the woodwork. Just ask Paul Pierce. If Sam Cassell were the one taken off the court in a wheelchair, nobody would have cared enough to accuse him of acting. If Curt Leskanic had the sock stigmata in 2004, there wouldn’t be any conspiracy theories.

In Boston, Schilling will be remembered as the guy who invited Theo Esptein to his house for Thanksgiving and ironed out a contract over pumpkin pie. After he signed, he made a truck commercial about going to Boston to win a championship, then unseated Pedro Martinez as the ace to deliver on that promise.

He hurt his ankle in the ALDS. He still took the mound and got blitzed by the Yankees in his first ALCS start, then allowed radical surgery on the ankle to, as he put it, make 60,000 New Yorkers shut up at once. He followed that with a smaller spot of blood on his sock, “K ALS” scrawled on his spikes, and a Game 2 win in the World Series that essentially put the comatose Cardinals on life support.

Schilling’s 2007 postseason effort didn’t have the drama of 2004. But he won a game in each series essentially disguised as a right-handed Frank Tanana, able to crank up his fastball into the low-90s when the situation called for it. At a time when Josh Beckett had dethroned him as the playoff workhorse, just as he had done to Martinez three years earlier, Schilling pitched on pride and guile and, once again, delivered.

He also delivered whenever there was a camera or microphone on. That diminishes him in a lot of eyes, including some within the media, which is a head-scratcher. Some of the same writers that are freezing Jim Rice out of the Hall for being surly and uncooperative will probably at least think twice about Schilling because they believe he’s too much of a self-promoter.

Try as he did, Curt Schilling couldn’t please all of the people all of the time, but he sure managed to make a lot of miserable New Englanders very happy, and there aren’t many immortals in Cooperstown who can put that on any plaque.