His locks free-flowing, and his quirky, juxtaposing windup spell out sentences in the book that is the 2009 San Francisco Giants.
Tim Lincecum is just the tasty, page-turning first chapter.
Everything else is falling into place. Everything for a team that was picked to finish, by some, fourth in the deplorable National League West.
They knew the pitching would be there, they knew that, but what they didn't know is that a slew of castoffs and no-namers would come to the helm and contribute on a daily basis to wins, spun by some of the best dealers on the mound.
Juan Uribe. Travis Ishikawa. Andres Torres. Nate Schierholtz.
Exactly.
At this point in the season, at 42-35, any self-respecting Giants fan would've taken a slap to the face had they been told their team would be here, seven games over the .500 mark with the All-Star break merely a couple weeks away. Winning on the road, getting timely hits, a bullpen stabilized from last season's epic meltdown.
Yeah, it's a different Giants squad this season, they just play, and leave it at that.
They swing the bats as if their lives depended on it, the defense, staunch in its resolve to backup what is arguably one of the best rotations, and well the pitching does take care of itself, albeit the disaster it took manager Bruce Bochy almost four months into the season to find out that Jonathan Sanchez has the stuff, but not the brain.
To quote the famous Crash Davis, he had "a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head."
It has been quite the emphatic turnaround, actually. To channel Davis, once again, the lead character in what is the best baseball movie ever made, Bull Durham, the Giants were left for dead early on.
"You just got lesson number one: don't think—it can only hurt the ball club," Davis said.
No one just came out and said it. They just thought it. It's the same thing. Semantics, I guess.
The Giants were stumbling along, playing close to .500 ball and then something clicked. Couldnt've been ol' Crash, the beleaguered cynic who loves nothing more than to laugh and crush the hell out of the ball.
It couldn't have been Crash that walked up to the Lincecum, Cain or even the Unit and said, "Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls—it's more democratic."
The Giants didn't need a battery-mate quote to rev up the engine.
The whole team was in a twilight zone. Putting up one, two, even three run games if they were lucky.
Now look at them.
They're on the road, turning double plays, belting out homers to all parts of the field, and most importantly, they're winning and when they're not winning they're losing—with style. Before they were bested at home, 8-1, by the Angels on June 16th, you had to go back a little over a month to find the last time the Giants were so shellacked.
May 9. Dodger Stadium. 8-0 the guys in the white-and-blue.
It's easy to bring kudos to the manager. His job to throw guys out there, call the pitches, call the plays—essentially manage a would-be win into realization. Yes, the Giants are playing "Bochy Ball", but it's more than that.
They're doing it their own way, too.
The "Kung Fu Panda" is on a tear. He still swings at 96 mph fastballs that are over the umps face mask, and he still fishes into oblivion on sinkers and sliders. But he still can muscle out a down-and-in deuce into right field. He can still catch up to the high heater and take it out.
That's what it is about this team. They're different. No one ballplayer is similar in his approach to the game.
There's Zito's zen and karma, guitar-picking ways, compared to that of Brian Wilson. Mohawk, flame-tattoos and all. Expectations, defied, obviously.
So what is it, then?
Is it a hot-streak? Perhaps. Some luck? Maybe. Is it the fact that these Giants, so largely-written off minus the No. 25 guy, have come together to rescind anything a archetypal scouting report says or what your run-of-the-mill ESPN or FoxSports analyst has to say.
They're not playing into the stigma. They're playing baseball.
Lincecum is basically unhittable. Matt Cain is an All-Star. Sanchez can't find water out of a boat. Freddie Lewis has unfortunately dissolved into oblivion. And above all else, Bengie Molina is still hitting clean-up.
What a game. What a team.
Where else, but the Paris of the West.
The city that has vagabonds wandering around the China Basin telling self-entertained stories of the "Say-Hey Kid".
The kid's, incognizant of their situation, fortune-and-glory, have brought electricity back to the bay. Nothing makes the ground shake more these days than a Lincecum sit-down, or a Pablo Sandoval launch to right.
They're having fun.
As Crash so routinely tells his guys during a mound visit, "Relax, let’s have some fun out here! This game’s fun, OK? Fun, g**-damnit."
Simplicity is bliss, and so is baseball.
And Los Gigantes are as idiosyncratic as the eclectic mix that is San Francisco.
Talk about a perfect match.
"This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."
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