As Lincecum's delivery was always more 'rotational' than some, this image does set up some contrasting lines with his raised left arm, but that is unavoidable for a photo shot so early in the delivery.
One very interesting photo element is again the pitch selected, which looks to be a 'circle change' off-speed pitch. This in turn makes one wonder how well the batter may have been able to see that, however that is probably just a trick of the photo selection as the ball would only drop into view like that for a brief portion of a second.
Overall, the most memorable take-away from this card is perhaps Lincecum's eyes and one of the more worried expressions I can recall on a Pitcher Pitching card like this one. Which, as we will see shortly, fits very well with the state of his career at the time this photo was shot and then this baseball card composed.
The card also shares a photo element with the CC Sabathia card in that Tim is wearing some sort of bracelet on his left wrist. Post-scan zoom reveals this one to feature Kanji characters (I think); his different bracelets in different seasons can still dredge up some Google results if you are curious.
There is a final element I quite like on this card, which is supplied by the Giants' "Home Alternate" uniform in and of itself, as a solid color alternate uniform makes for a better baseball card than one featuring home whites or road greys. This is only the 3rd card in 55 now to feature such a uniform, which somewhat surprised as I just counted them as I think Topps has been increasing their use of photos of these uniforms. And that colorful orange uni gives it a nice colorful harmony with the blurred advertising on the outfield wall - a well chosen ad strategy, it appears.
Uniform Hero? It can't be fully seen on-card but Lincecum did wear #55 throughout his career and he was still one of the brighter stars in the game when this card was composed.
Where’d the egg hatch? Lincecum showed so much promise as a teenaged Pitcher that he was actually drafted 3 times, something I figure has to be fairly rare. First the Cubs tried to sign him straight out of high school in 2003 (48th round), then the Indians tried again after two years of pitching in college in 2005 (42nd round), and then finally the Giants stepped up and made him their first round pick, 10th overall, in 2006.
How about the migrations? He would then debut with a nearly full (24 starts) Rookie season in 2007, before really 'nailing it' in 2008, making his first All-Star team, his first of 2 consecutive Cy Young awards, and earning the first red ink stat totals on the back of his baseball card -
Don’t flip over real Turtles.
By the late fall of 2012 when this card was being composed, Lincecum's unique mechanics were so well-known that they became a simple, and perfect, topic for the Topps scribe here.
Amongst all the red ink stats however are a trio of very telling ones from the 2012 season that perhaps inform that worried expression we see on the front of the card.
Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?
CAREER CHASE: With 1,317 strikeouts Lincecum is 4,397 away from Nolan Ryan's all-time record of 5,714.
After 3 league lead in italics for Ks in his first 4 seasons one would think that would be the perfect launching point for an attempt at Ryan's record. But despite starting a career with those 1,317 strikeouts in 6 years, here Lincecum is still more Ks away from Ryan than all but 2 MLB Pitchers have ever even thrown.
Lincecum would never return to his dominant early career results and would only pitch for the Giants through the 2015 season. A probably never-ending hope of finding the right mechanical adjustments, after this card was made, included a final attempt with a new coaching staff in southern California via 9 starts for the Angels in 2016, but then Tim Lincecum had to retire.
He finished his MLB career with 1,736 Strike-outs.
After 3 league lead in italics for Ks in his first 4 seasons one would think that would be the perfect launching point for an attempt at Ryan's record. But despite starting a career with those 1,317 strikeouts in 6 years, here Lincecum is still more Ks away from Ryan than all but 2 MLB Pitchers have ever even thrown.
Lincecum would never return to his dominant early career results and would only pitch for the Giants through the 2015 season. A probably never-ending hope of finding the right mechanical adjustments, after this card was made, included a final attempt with a new coaching staff in southern California via 9 starts for the Angels in 2016, but then Tim Lincecum had to retire.
He finished his MLB career with 1,736 Strike-outs.
Subspecies? Only one year removed from elite MLB production, Lincecum probably appeared on every Topps checklist in 2013 and this same card can be seen in Opening Day and Chrome. There is also one photo variant for this card # which was released in Series 2 as part of the "sunglasses" set of Short Prints. It is a good looking card that I look forward to owning some day, and sharing with you here.
Bling That Shell As black is basically the secondary 'team color' for the Giants and one that is most easily noticed on the Home Alternate uniform shown here, a black parallel of this one would be a very nice card. However matching the black parallel to Adam Wainwright's special hat on card #50 has already used that color for this page. So I went with the emerald parallel seen below, which amuses me via tying into a lesser known, off-season incident in Lincecum's heyday that you can Google up if you wish. In this scan there does appear to be a print line running across the name plate/bar area of the card, but that is completely invisible in-hand. It has been a good 20 cards or so since we have seen one of these:
Normally right here it would be time to scan up a colorful page of 9 parallel Sea Turtles however page construction is on-going for this one. So this page will ultimately have 2 more photo upload updates as this blog moves along at a turtle's pace over the years to come.
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