Curt Schilling is Finished; Repeat: Finished

The often brash and brilliantly arrogant Red Sox hurler Curt Schilling recently opined in public that the BOSOX medical staff was correct in denying him the shoulder surgery he wanted last winter -- a procedure recommended by his personal orthopedic surgeon (who has at least twice carved on Schilling in the past) to reconstruct/repair/restore his frayed biceps tendon.

That offending tendon, by report, had been reduced to a few strands of bandied connective tissue (the biceps tendon, by the way, serves to flex, that is bend, the elbow joint and is not a prime mover with pitching motion).

Contrary to popular belief, surgery is definitely not always the answer to every woe. Sometimes it makes things better, sometimes it makes things worse, sometimes things are unchanged postoperatively.

In some cases, it's a crap shoot, but, clearly, surgeons get paid to operate, that's what they like to do, and, it seems, every problem they encounter is something to fix with a knife (talk about self-assured arrogance?).

It is unclear exactly what surgical procedure was recommended, but sewing the withered ends of two paint brushes together (which, anatomically, is what a muscle, tendon, or ligament rupture looks like) is no job for the fainthearted. And yet, despite the medical reports, Schilling is in active rehab and apparently throwing on the side.

So what happened to the biceps tendon? Something, some activity, wore it out. Did it regenerate from scar? Parabiosis? Reanimation of dead tissue? Not likely.

Either the initial MRI reading and subsequent diagnosis was incorrect (which is common) or that tendon is holding by the thinnest of threads. The suspicion is that it is the latter -- and you can be certain you have not heard the last of Curt Schilling's biceps tendon. Curt Schilling will never pitch in the Bigs again.