CURT SCHILLING woke up early on Sunday morning unable to walk. He ended the day as the winning pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who beat the St Louis Cardinals 6-2 to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven World Series. And if they go on to win two more games, Schilling is assured of hero status in Red Sox Nation, the strange New England tribe whose obsession with this traditionally star-crossed team knows no bounds.

All this seemed far out of reach when Schilling awoke to blinding pain in his injured right ankle. “I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t move,” he said. “I didn’t know what happened but as soon as I woke up I knew there was a problem.”

The real surprise was that it had taken this long. Schilling suffered the injury two weeks ago, but such is his importance that he and the team doctors decided on an emergency fix: two sutures were inserted just before game six of the American League Championship Series, fixing the flapping tendon in place. Schilling then produced an amazing performance, giving up only two runs against the New York Yankees, Boston’s arch-rivals, as the blood seeping from his ankle gave him real red socks.

When the procedure was repeated before his scheduled appearance on Sunday, a third stitch was inserted, and this extra one trapped a nerve. So only hours before the game, the team doctor removed it and, suddenly, the man carrying the weight of Red Sox expectations could walk to the mound. Once there, he performed marvellously.

Once again the blood began to appear around his ankle but, otherwise, there was no sign of weakness in six masterful innings against probably the best hitting team in recent history. “That is certainly the best line-up, one to nine, that I have ever faced,” Schilling said.

Still the Cardinals could do nothing with him, despite Boston committing four errors, three of them by Bill Mueller, the third baseman. There was a stirring moment at the end of the sixth, when Mueller’s third blunder had just extended the inning. Schilling was asked what he had said to Mueller as they met on the mound. “I told him I would get the third out,” he said. He did just that and, with the help of two-run hits from Jason Varitek, Mark Bellhorn and Orlando Cabrera in the first, fourth and sixth innings, he was able to hand the Red Sox the game.

Schilling’s ability, passion and guts, combined with strong but understated religious beliefs, may make him the stuff of heroes, but there is another dimension to his success that is every bit as much a part of the American dream. When he signed for Boston at the beginning of the season, he did so for an astonishing contract that pays him $12 million (about £6.57 million) this season, $12.5 million next year and $13 million in 2006.

But Schilling, a bright, articulate man who negotiated his own terms, added another clause. If the Red Sox were to succeed in their desperate quest for a first World Series win since 1918, his salary would rise by $2 million the next year and his contract would be extended for a fourth year at $13 million. So a championship for the Red Sox will bring Schilling an extra $15 million. Not bad for a man who, at 38 , is reaching the end of his career.

Schilling is a baseball historian, too, so he will know that the last time the Red Sox reached the World Series, in 1986, they won the first two games but lost in seven to the New York Mets, perhaps the most painful of their many disappointments. The series resumes tonight in St Louis, where the Cardinals have not lost in the play-offs this season. Schilling may yet be required again.