ARLINGTON, Texas — Baseball has never looked healthier, now that the game has finally flushed steroids out of its system.
That’s reason No. 1 San Francisco pitcher Tim Lincecum, who might weigh 170 pounds after downing a pizza, is a giant of a man that Barry Bonds failed to be.
Reason No. 2? Lincecum did what Bonds and all his tainted home runs could never achieve.
On the strength of his slender right arm, Lincecum made the Texas Rangers say uncle. When his little pitching gem was in the books as a 3-1 victory, Lincecum had lifted a long-suffering Giants franchise to its first World Series championship since 1954.
“We wanted to nail it down,” Lincecum said Monday.
The biggest man in baseball is a quirky little hippie freak.
The last time we saw Bonds, a 46-year-old fallen star trying to stay one step ahead of the Feds, he was sitting in the ballpark as the Giants took the field on opening night of this Fall Classic.
“They don’t need me,” Bonds said.
Can we get a show of hands? Who is nostalgic for Bonds? Anybody miss the steroids era, when home runs were cheap and cheaters prospered?
Baseball no longer needs the juice to be compelling theater. From Cliff Lee to Ubaldo Jimenez, pitching is back.
During the darkest days of the steroids era, who could have dreamed that it would take Lincecum to slay the specter of sluggers shooting up steroids behind closed doors?
Lincecum means we don’t have to stay up all night to watch the World Series. To clinch their championship in Game 5, the Giants used 10 strikeouts by Lincecum to complete the nine innings in only 2 hours and 32 minutes.
His long, shaggy hair flows like free love in Haight-Ashbury during 1967, and as best we know, the only drug that Lincecum might have a hankering for is marijuana.
Not so very long ago, with every baseball game you watched, there was a nagging doubt as big as Bonds’ head: Is any of this real?
Better baseball through chemistry eventually blew up in the faces of everybody from commissioner Bud Selig to pitcher Roger Clemens.
Baseball has ceased to play like a video game. Purging steroids might have cut down on scoreboards exploding with fireworks, but the game has returned to its more natural rhythm and flow. It’s somehow reassuring to know you don’t have to be as bulky as an NFL linebacker to be a star on the diamond.
Despite swinging a big, mean bat, Bonds fell just short of bringing San Francisco a championship in 2002. The City by the Bay would still be waiting on its first World Series victory parade if not for Lincecum. He went 4-1 during this postseason run, with a sterling 2.43 earned run average and a stunning 43 strikeouts.
With the exception of a solo home run by Nelson Cruz in the seventh inning, Texas batters appeared helpless against Lincecum in the final game of a World Series that saw the Rangers hit .190.
For more than a decade, steroids turned baseball into a bad cartoon, where all the fake heroes swaggered toward home plate, their forearms the size of hams. Trouble was: Too many of these Popeyes were eating spiked spinach.
Every time Lincecum takes the mound and unleashes a fastball, I feel like chuckling with delight. Is it just me, or does this dude look like the Roadrunner?
There is not an ounce of fat or artifice on Lincecum. During a TV interview after the Giants clinched the National West title, upon asked if the champagne shower was in the offing, the normally reticent Lincecum joyfully responded in the affirmative and punctuated his answer with a profanity.
Hey, the Roadrunner was a man of few words too.
Beep. Beep.
The World Series was won by a little Giant named Lincecum.
Falling in love with baseball again feels . . . what’s the word? Natural.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
