Curt Schilling's bloody sock hitting auction block

NEW YORK (AP) -- The bloody sock worn by Curt Schilling during the 2004 World Series is set to be sold off - a casualty of sorts of the high-profile collapse

Curt Schilling's sock became famously bloody in Game 2 of the 2004 World Series :: Ray Stubblebine/Icon SMI

NEW YORK (AP) -- The bloody sock worn by Curt Schilling during the 2004 World Series is set to be sold off - a casualty of sorts of the high-profile collapse of the former Boston Red Sox pitcher's video game company.

Online bidding opened several weeks ago at $25,000 and by Friday had reached $60,000. Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions, says he expects the sock will fetch at least $100,000 - though probably a lot more - in Saturday night bidding at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion.

Schilling had loaned the sock to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., after the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 for the first time in 86 years. But it was returned to him last year so he could sell it to cover millions in loans for his startup.

38 Studios was lured to Providence from Massachusetts after Rhode Island's economic development agency in 2010 approved a $75 million loan guarantee. The company ran out of money less than two years later and filed for bankruptcy. Rhode Island faces a tab of some $100 million related to the deal, including interest, and the agency is suing Schilling and others, saying it was misled.

Rhode Island won't see any of the proceeds from the sock's sale; Schilling listed the sock as bank collateral last year in a filing in Massachusetts. He has said he invested some $50 million in the company and lost all his baseball earnings. Selling the sock, he told WEEI-AM in Boston, is part of "having to pay for your mistakes."

The sock up for sale is actually the second of two. The more famous one was stained when Schilling pitched through an ankle injury during game 6 of the 2004 American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees; that sock is said to have been discarded at Yankee Stadium.

Another top item at Saturday night's auction is the jersey worn by U.S. Olympic team captain Mike Eruzione during the Miracle on Ice victory over the Soviet Union in 1980.