It was a good day in Red Sox Nation. First, Curt Schilling signed a 1-year deal to finish his career with the Red Sox. The deal is for an $8 million base, plus a bucket of incentives: $3 million based on innings pitched, $1 million for getting a single Cy Young Award vote and a $2 million weight clause.

Hell, for $2 million I'd get myself to be as thin as Twiggy.

I think this is a good thing both for Schill and the Sox. Schilling gets to finish his career in a place that he and his family obviously enjoy being on a team that should be a World Series contender again. The Sox are on the hook for relatively short money if Schilling has another regular season like 2007, and they have a guy who can be a great mentor for what is a relatively young starting rotation, with the exception of Wake.

It seems like the Sox have one starter too many at this point (Beckett, Schilling, Wakefield, Matsuzaka, Lester and Buchholz), but I think we learned in 2006 that you can never have too much depth in the starting rotation. Anyone else remember pining for Bronson Arroyo after he was traded to the Reds as the Sox went through 14 different starting pitchers? For comparisons sake, Boston used nine starters this year.

The other exciting event was that Kevin Youkilis won a much deserved Gold Glove at first base. Youk has been outstanding since moving across the diamond and hasn't made an error in a regular season game since the middle of the 2006 season.

Congratulations to both Schilling and Youk!