Timmy, why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?
San Francisco Giants' pitcher Tim Lincecum was a bona fide phenom when he won the Cy Young award in 2008 and 2009, but in recent years he seems to have lost the magic. In the latest of a series of somewhat inexplicable hair/face-related decisions that may or may not be related to his attempt to climb back to dominance, he has unveiled a new mustache. As die-hard baseball fanatics, BuzzFeed's Lindsey Adler and Summer Anne Burton have a lot of thoughts about The Stache.
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Summer Anne Burton: OK, so we're here to discuss San Francisco Giants' pitcher Tim Lincecum's new mustache. And I'm here to say I think the mustache is great! Big fan. I'm not a Giants fan, but as a baseball fanatic who's been increasingly invested over the last six years or so, I have a lot of feelings about Tim Lincecum, generally speaking. In just a few years, I've gone from admiration and confidence that he was going to end up being a first-ballot Hall of Famer, to sadness and sympathy when he started to decline, to a strange brew of anxiety and optimism for his currently somewhat positive trajectory (aided by the fact that I drafted him for my fantasy baseball team this year). And I feel that this mustache really speaks to all of that. The mustache contains multitudes. Lindsey, you're a Giants fan, so I know you must have thoughts…
Lindsey Adler: Timmy is my dude. He's one of the very few athletes I find relatable. This does in fact lead me to psychoanalyze some of Timmy's more bizarre choices. I've watched my two-time Cy Young winner let his ERA skyrocket, pitch relief in the 2012 World Series, and sign a two-year extension (for maybe too much money) when we were certain he was leaving San Francisco. Timmy spent the 2012 offseason in Mexico and returned with a new haircut à la Atticus Finch. This offseason, he installed a synthetic mound in a warehouse in Seattle and came back with that damn mustache.
You know when you get out of a relationship and feel like it's time to make some changes and enter your next endeavor hotter, cooler, and more prepared? That's how I see Timmy's mustache: a breakup makeover. Can whatever confidence he gets from the upper-lip fuzz help him throw more strikes? I'm doubtful.
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