Empty nest: Letting Timmy go

 

Timmy and Buster brought me back to baseball, and only partly because the former Little League mom in me couldn’t resist players named “Timmy” and “Buster.”

In 2009, with an empty nest, I found more time to follow the San Francisco Giants again, and to really learn the game. Tim Lincecum, the slender, free-spirited “Freak” with the spring-loaded, high-kick windup, and his crewcut battery mate Buster Posey quickly became my Special Boys™. In the wake of the Barry Bonds steroid scandal, Tim became the new face of the Giants, and not a moment too soon. His shoulder length hair flying from under his cap, his chill attitude, even his pot bust (which launched a bootleg trade in “Let Timmy Smoke” T-shirts), all seemed made for San Francisco. He was never “Tim” or “Lincecum,” to fans, always “Timmy.” Even the Giants’ broadcasters, even manager Bruce Bochy, called him by the diminutive. But this little guy was as tough as they come. In his prime, his changeup was electric strikeout stuff, and he is the only pitcher to no-hit the same team in consecutive seasons (the San Diego Padres in 2013 and 2014, taking 148 pitches to complete the first one).

Without Timmy, the Giants would not have won their 2010 World Championship (and maybe not 2012, either). It’s that simple. In his first postseason start, Game 1 of the 2010 NLDS against the Atlanta Braves, he recorded 14 strikeouts in a complete game two-hit victory. In Game 6 of the 2010 NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies, he entered in relief on one day’s rest, helping the Giants clinch the pennant. It was Timmy who started Game 5 of the 2010 World Series, who was carried on his teammates shoulders with his long hair blowing in the Texas breeze, at game’s end.

Timmy’s complicated delivery started to go wonky in 2012, but he accepted a postseason bullpen role with his typical graciousness and grit. He was the winning pitcher in long relief in the Giants’ 2012 NLDS victory over the Cincinnati Reds. Despite the no-hitters in 2013 and 2014, Timmy’s pitch command was erratic and there were stints on the DL throughout 2014 and 2015. So, Timmy the free agent and his surgically repaired hip are now off to the L.A. Angels. I wish the Giants had given him another shot, but he wants to be a starter again, and that wasn’t in the plan here. I miss him and wish him the best of luck. The only bright side to Timmy leaving home is that at least he didn’t go to the Dodgers.

I’ll never get used to a Giants rotation that does not include Tim Lincecum. If he had played for Boston or Philly, he would have been eaten alive when he started to skid. But whenever he took the mound at AT&T Park, he had the collective hope and good vibes of this fan base beamed his way. Maybe it was his sweet disposition, or the fact that he grew up before our eyes, or the nervy competitiveness he showed even in his most dispiriting seasons, but the Giants’ faithful never gave up on him. We had seen his brilliance, and we never stopped believing we would see it again. Call us softies, but he was our Timmy, and we loved him unconditionally.

Tim Lincecum’s Greatest Hits

1.First San Francisco Giant to win the NL strikeout title (256), 2008

2.Back-to-back Cy Young Awards, 2008-09

3.Tied with Sandy Koufax as the only two pitchers with multiple Cy Young Awards, multiple no-hitters, multiple All-Star Games and multiple World Series championships

4. Complete game shutout with 14 strikeouts (a Giants’ postseason record), Game 1 of the 2010 NLDS vs. Atlanta Braves

5. Winning pitcher, Game 5 of the 2010 World Series, the Giants’ first World Championship of the San Francisco era

6. Strikes out 13 in a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres, July 13, 2013 (and is the recipient of a patented Buster Hug)

 

7. First pitcher in MLB history to throw no-hitter against the same team in consecutive seasons, June 25, 2014

8.Winning pitcher in relief, Game 4, 2012 NLDS vs. Cincinnati Reds (forcing Game 5, which the Giants won on the way to their second World Championship)

9. 108-83 career win-loss record with the Giants

10. THIS:

©Joyce Millman, The Mix Tape, 2016

The perfect game

I know I’ve been a little sports-heavy on this blog, but indulge me a few words about Matt Cain. The stalwart grand old man (at the age of 27) of the San Francisco Giants pitching staff sums up everything that’s good and just and right about baseball and sports in general. After seven years of dependable, often dominating, pitching, Cainer pitched his first no-hitter as a major leaguer last night. Not just a no-hitter, but a perfect game, meaning that he allowed no opposing players (in this case, Houston Astros) to reach base. To put this in perspective for non-sports fans, only 22 pitchers in major league history have pitched a perfect game;  no Giant has ever done it. And the only other pitcher to strike out 14 batters in a perfect game, as Cain did, was Sandy Koufax. Look him up, if you’ve never heard the name.

What makes Cain’s perfect game so, well, perfect is that it really could not have happened to a better player and a better man. Cain’s calm, mature demeanor on the field has made him the rock of the Giants staff. He is a quiet but fearless leader, the team’s player union rep. He never whines, never showboats. He handled his recent contract renegotiation with class, never issuing threats or ultimatums. He has been a Giant his whole career, and, thanks to the front office’s commitment to pitching, will finish his career as one. He is the face of the Giants’ connection to Project Open Hand, the venerable San Francisco charity that provides food for people living with HIV and AIDS, sponsoring the annual fun run the Giants hold to raise funds for the group. In the Showtime documentary series about the Giants, “The Franchise,”  Cain came across as a devoted husband and new father, and he remains one of those players about whom you never hear a whiff of scandal. When asked what he did on the day of the perfect game, Cain said that it had been just another homestand day:  had breakfast with his wife and daughter, let “my crazy one and a half year old” run around in a park, you know, family stuff.

And that’s the thing about sports history, you never know when it’s going to happen. You turn on the TV or you head to the park for just another Wednesday night game, except, in baseball, you can never be sure you’ll be seeing just another Wednesday night game. There’s always the potential for ordinary to turn extraordinary. Sports is unscripted drama, but not in the manufactured way of reality TV. It’s a drama (or, often, comedy) that plays out spontaneously, yet no one could have written it better. When Cain, the archetype of the broad-shouldered, un-flashy hero — think Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper  —  took the perfect game into the fifth, and then the sixth, and seventh, the crowd came to life, standing and urging Cain on with every pitch. His teammates went into a hyper-focused state, making impossible catches to take away runs, digging as deep as Cain was to avoid committing errors in the field that would have permitted a man to reach base.

When the final out came, the usually stoic Cain pumped his arm and shouted,  the Giants mobbed him and the crowd wept and cheered.  Recently voted the most unsung pitcher in baseball by his peers in an ESPN Magazine poll,  Cain had finally gotten the recognition he deserved. Catcher Buster Posey, who’s cut from the same preternaturally mature cloth as Cain and who spent most of 2011 recovering from a horrific on field leg and ankle injury, entered the record books as Cain’s battery mate in perfection — the baseball gods taketh away, the baseball gods giveth back and say, “My bad, bro.”

And that’s another beautiful thing about baseball:  Cain was not laboring alone out there, he needed Posey and his teammates (by the way, the final score was 10-0, for a team that usually takes a week to score that many runs) to ensure his achievement. A perfect game may be etched in one man’s legacy, but it is not his legacy, or his accomplishment, alone.  Matt Cain knows it, which is why he sat at the podium answering press questions flanked by Posey on one side and outfielder Gregor Blanco, of the magnificent catch, on the other. And, which is why Matt Cain will have a statue outside AT&T Park someday and Barry Bonds won’t.

Bruce Springsteen wrote a couple of lines in “Long Walk Home” about America itself,  but they apply to baseball as well, and I’ve been thinking about them today as I replay the game in my head:  “Son, we’re lucky in this town, it’s a beautiful place to be born/ It just wraps its arms around you, nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone.”  Perfect words for a perfect game.

© Joyce Millman, The Mix Tape, 2012