“Let Tim Smoke”

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

That’s exactly what San Francisco Giants ace Tim Lincecum did in the World Serious, although the slogan actually refers to Lincecum’s pot bust last year, as New York Times reporter Tyler Kepner has noted:

Lincecum dresses in the space that once belonged to Barry Bonds, who is largely scorned for his role in baseball’s steroids scandal. Lincecum was charged last off-season with marijuana possession, but that seems to have endeared him even more to certain fans in San Francisco, where a popular T-shirt bears the slogan, “Let Tim Smoke.”

Lincecum is the Best Pitcher Nobody Knew – until this week. He’s only earned two Cy Young Awards and only has the most strikeouts in baseball history for a pitcher’s first four seasons.

At 26.

They don’t call him The Freak for nothing.

More from Kepner’s fine NYT piece:

[B]aseball was his destiny, shaped in the suburbs of Seattle by his father, Chris, who worked for Boeing. Chris built his son’s unusual delivery: back to the plate, glove raised to the sky, then a whirling of hips and a stride, wrote Roger Angell of The New Yorker, like “a January commuter arching over six feet of slush.”

Beautiful.

Just like Lincecum’s performance in the Series.