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What: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10.

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Curt Schilling of the Arizona Diamondbacks has a chilling story to tell. And he and wife Shonda tell it to correspondent Jim Lampley on this edition of “Real Sports.”

It’s not only that Shonda, who is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, was diagnosed with a serious type of skin cancer a year ago. It’s not only Schilling had a cancer scare himself in 1998 when a lesion developed on his gums. And it’s not only that Schilling’s father, Cliff, died of a heart attack in 1988 in front of Curt not long after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

Schilling story is so chilling because, after all that, he can’t quit chewing tobacco.

“On a golf course a buddy said, ‘Oh you can have one [chew]. You’ve haven’t done it in a year, you won’t go back,’” Schilling said. “A week later I was full-blown addicted again. Hands down it’s the only thing that’s consistently beaten me.”

Asked how big the problem is, Schilling says: “It’s a very big problem because if I don’t find a way to beat it, it’ll probably be something that will eventually end up killing me. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

Shonda says of her battle with Stage 2 melanoma: “What dumbfounded me is that it could kill me.”

She has undergone five surgeries, enduring more than 30 incisions to remove cancerous growths. Having moved to Phoenix in January, Shonda must wear special clothing the sun can’t penetrate, and the couple’s children aren’t allowed to play outside until the sun sets.

Another of the four segments centers on Lee Benson, a 6-foot-11 pro basketball prospect who is a freshman at Brown Mackie College in Salina, Kan. Benson, 28, is on parole after serving time for his involvement in a drug-related murder in Dayton, Ohio.