On Aug. 5, 2016, Tim Lincecum took the mound on a big league field for what ended up being the final time of his career. That he did so wearing an unfamiliar Angels red instead of his signature San Francisco black-and-orange is a footnote best forgotten. The game—and Lincecum’s performance, in which he surrendered six runs in the first inning—was altogether an unmemorable one, the dying embers of a career that once burned brighter than anyone else’s.
Maybe it’s not all that surprising that a 5' 11" pitcher—one with a delivery so violent that former Cleveland general manager Mark Shapiro once remarked, “It looks like his head is going to snap off and his arm is going to fly off”—crashed down to Earth so suddenly after conquering the sport so quickly.