Advertisement

For more than eight months, as the pain in his left hip faded and the old feeling he hadn't felt in years returned, Tim Lincecum turned into more of an enigma than he'd ever been. Scouts gossiped about how they'd heard from their best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend that they saw Lincecum at the 31 Flavors and his fastball wasn't even hitting 85 mph. All the while, not a word from Lincecum. After years of confounding baseball as to how he coaxed such brilliance out of a body that looked incapable of harnessing it, now Lincecum was keeping them on edge with his silence.