Maybe you’ve never heard of him, but Curt Schilling retired today. The only reason you wouldn’t have heard of him is a series of strokes or other brain maladies that made you blind and unable to hear the voice of any ESPN SportsCenter anchor; the rest of America is taking an overdue sigh of relief that the bloviating Boston Red Sox right-hander will be shuffling off this professional coil instead of Favre-ing around for the next couple years, interrupting actual sports so he can opine publicly about whether he should start playing again.

(Good night, funnyman.)

We’re even further indebted to Schilling that he didn’t make this decision via a press conference. As Clay Shirky recently wrote:

[T]he core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.

And though he meant it in terms of the newspaper industry, it applies just as easily to press conferences. Instead of sitting in front of dozens of video cameras and speaking into even more microphones and pretending to cry (hey there, A-Rod!), Schilling merely posted a message on his blog, 38 PITCHES, explaining his decision. That way, Red Sox fans can read it at their own leisure while the rest of the world who could really give a damn less what Schilling does may merrily ignore it altogether. And again, unlike Favre, this appears to be final: Read more…