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Larry Lucchino ‘Surprised’ by Curt Schilling’s Claim That Red Sox Employee Encouraged Pitcher to Use PEDs

Curt Schilling rocked the baseball world when he claimed this week that a member of the Red Sox organization encouraged him to use performance-enhancing drugs back in 2008. Among those surprised was Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, who responded to the news Thursday, The Boston Globe reported.

“Certainly, [the allegation] is something to look into, but it came from out of left field, to use a baseball cliche,” Lucchino said at a Jimmy Fund event in Boston.

During an appearance on ESPN Radio on Wednesday, Schilling claimed that he was approached about using PEDs by someone working for the Red Sox as he recovered from an injury.

“At the end of my career, in 2008, when I had gotten hurt, there was a conversation that I was involved in, in which it was brought to my attention that this is a potential path I might want to pursue,” Schilling said.

“It was an incredibly uncomfortable conversation, because it came up in the midst of a group of people. The other people weren’t in the conversation, but they could clearly hear the conversation. And it was suggested to me that at my age and in my situation, why not? What did I have to lose? Because if I wasn’t going to get healthy, it didn’t matter. And if I did get healthy, great.”

Schilling declined to identify the members of the organization he spoke with, but he did clarify that they are no longer with the organization, and they were not in uniform or members of the baseball operations division of the front office.