For the second time in two seasons, Tim Lincecum, the 25-year-old Bellevue native and former Washington Huskies ace, has won the National League’s Cy Young Award.
The news should make Seattle area fans happy and proud, the way the announcement of the 2007 NBA Rookie of the Year award did when it was given to UW great Brandon Roy. But while it’s natural to revel in Roy’s accomplishments at Portland – even as we belittle the basketball league that makes his success possible – Lincecum’s emergence in San Francisco as Mr. Cy Young (with the emphasis on the young) is more difficult to reconcile.
Whenever Lincecum does something notable on the mound – and it seems as though he does something notable every week – we are reminded how the Mariners passed on him in the 2006 draft. Here was a hometown kid regarded as the most dominant college pitcher in America, with a live-wire arm and no history of injuries, and the Mariners instead chose Brandon Morrow, a third-team Pac-10 selection with a documented history of health issues.
Nothing against Morrow, the erstwhile closer who finally may have found his niche in Seattle as a middle-of-the-rotation starter. But the odds of him winning a single Cy Young award, much less two of them, are steeper than the odds that Safeco Field fans someday will take snapshots of each other in front of a bronze statue dedicated to Scott Spiezio.
A German word comes to mind, “schadenfreude.” It defines the pleasure we get from the misfortune of others. Learning of Tim Lincecum becoming the first pitcher to win a pair of Cy Young trophies in his first three big-league seasons is precisely the opposite of schadenfreude. As Lincecum takes pleasure in his ground-breaking achievements, we dwell on our misfortune.
What is the opposite of schadenfreude? Hmmm. Freudenschade?
Freudenschade: It rekindles memories of that June 6, 2006, morning in the draft room at Safeco Field, where scouts clenched their firsts and exchanged thumbs-up gestures after the Pirates took University of Houston right-hander Brad Lincoln at No. 4. The Mariners were next with the fifth choice, and scouts could not contain their giddiness. They had their man.
Only their man wasn’t Lincecum. He would fall to the Giants with the 10th pick. The best college pitcher in the country had been determined to be the third-best pitching prospect in the Pac-10, behind Stanford’s Greg Reynolds and Morrow.
Reynolds, who went to the Rockies at No. 3, has been an even more frustrating project than Morrow. He finished 2-8 in 2008, his only major-league season, before spending 2009 on the shelf with right shoulder discomfort. Recovering from arthroscopic surgery, Reynolds looks to begin 2010 in Triple-A.
When the National League Cy Young results were made public Thursday, I doubt Colorado fans gnashed their teeth about how the Rockies blew a chance at drafting Lincecum. For that matter, I doubt fans of any of the other teams that missed on Lincecum recalled the 2006 draft.
Nope. The inability to project Lincecum as a future Hall of Famer out of college is significant only to fans of the Mariners, whose scouts traveled hundreds of thousands of miles in search of that special somebody – only to find out the pitching gem of the draft class of ’06 had been a 10-minute drive from Safeco Field.
Except he was short and thin, with a home-schooled pitching motion the Mariners found quirky. Scouts are scared off by what they don’t understand, and they didn’t understand how Lincecum’s 5-foot-10, 172-pound body could generate superior velocity and movement on his pitches without causing him arm problems.
It’s silly, I suppose, to rehash the details. Bill Bavasi, the Mariners’ general manager in 2006, is gone. So is scouting director Bob Fontaine, among the first executives to be released after the arrival of general manager Jack Zduriencik. The new regime inherited a mess of a 40-man roster and decided its first order of business would be to turn the page. Why be fixated on what can’t be fixed?
That’s the logical way of looking at Lincecum’s burst into superstardom with the Giants. It’s logical to wish him well, and trust that his recent arrest for possessing a small amount of marijuana in his car was more a stupid mistake than an indication of the kind of lifestyle that can derail a career.
It’s logical to think of Lincecum as the legendary Washington Huskies pitcher who has gone on to become a legendary San Francisco Giants pitcher.
It’s logical, all very logical, and I’ll start relying on logic as soon as I’m able to come to grips with the fact that one the greatest pitchers in the world put himself on the map as a college player in Seattle, 10 minutes from Safeco Field.
Congratulations, Timmy. Before you take home your third Cy Young Award, feel free to mix in string of mediocre 12-win seasons. It’ll be easier to root for you.
