Gone is the fresh-faced, long-haired kid who bedeviled hitters and was beloved by the San Francisco faithful. In his place sits a 33-year-old man, face drawn gaunt by age, genetics, and a week fraught with turmoil. The first news to break came on February 27, when reports began to surface that the Texas Rangers—one of several teams to have attended Tim Lincecum’s showcase at the Driveline Baseball facility—had emerged as the one that would sign the two-time Cy Young award winner.

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Then came the other news. Tim’s older brother Sean, just 37 years old, had died unexpectedly on February 22.

“Uhhh, it’s been tough,” he says softly in reply to a question about how he’s gotten through the last week. “I think I have the right people around me. I have a good support group. My family has been closer than ever, recently. So with that… they’ve helped me out, and vice versa, so I think it’s a…” he pauses and looks down, eventually tightening his lips and grimacing.

“I don’t know,” he concludes, looking up and into the eyes of the reporter. “That’s probably all I’ve got right there.”

Tim Lincecum has always been unique. Less than a year after being drafted tenth overall in the June 2006 MLB draft, the 5’11”, 170-pound wunderkind made his MLB debut with a three-strikeout inning in May of 2007. He seemed to be dropped from the land of the Puget Sound into Barry Bonds’ final season like some joy tornado to offset the sport’s fractious relationship with its new home run king. While the pundits debated the legitimacy of Bonds’ record with all the furor of a congressional hearing, Lincecum smiled his crooked smile, reached back like he had forgotten his keys on the way off the mound, and flung 99 mph filth past NL hitters. He was great fun to watch, but the results were mixed: Lincecum went 7-5 with an ERA of 4.00 in 24 starts in his rookie season, and didn’t get a single Rookie of the Year vote.

By the following year, however, Lincecum was the best pitcher in the National League. He struck out a league-best 265 batters in 227 innings (a 10.5-per-nine-innings rate), allowed 0.4 home runs and 7.2 hits per nine innings, and accrued a 2.63 FIP and a 168 ERA+.

Each of those were league bests (as were his 17 wild pitches), and he won his first trip to the All-Star Game and his first Cy Young award.

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In 2009 he was somehow even better. His ERA dropped from 2.62 to 2.48, his FIP dropped to 2.34, and he gave up just 6.7 hits per nine innings. He went a combined 33-12 in 2008-2009 on Giants teams that went a combined 160-164.

In 2010, the Giants caught up.

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Rangers GM Jon Daniels deadpanned yesterday when asked about the 2010 World Series. Lincecum won Game One against the Rangers, then returned to win the clinching Game Five by striking out ten Rangers in eight innings. “When I spoke to (Tim) on the phone before he signed, he apologized for it,” Daniels added, then joked: “It wasn’t a very sincere apology.”

“I just remember Cliff Lee,” Lincecum smiles. “I remember Edgar Renteria’s three-run home run, ummm…”

He starts to trail off a little, losing his train of thought. He pauses and stares into the distance for a beat, then his eyebrows raise as he pulls himself back into the moment from wherever he has gone.

Grief does this. It stands on the tracks and puts its hands up like some overzealous inspector, putting a halt to your train of thought, then oozing in like a bog-gremlin, not so much inspecting the brain’s cargo as sliming it with a mildew smell that you can’t ever fully get out. The engine sputters and reboots. You wait in the engineer’s seat until the power returns. Eyebrows raise, and the train soldiers on, now behind schedule from the interruption.

“Obviously I was a big part of that with Game One and Game Five,” Lincecum continues. “But… I think just a lot of special moments for people. Yeah, I mean, it feels like it’s so long ago, but we had a couple after that, so …it’s just kind of mixed in there. It was fun to be a big part of it, but I think each World Series after that definitely had its special place, and I got a special part of it as well.”

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2011 was the fourth consecutive—and final—year that Tim Lincecum was an All-Star. He struck out more batters (220) than innings pitched (217), and his ERA was still a sparkling 2.74—to date, the last season in which it would be under 4.00—but his fastball now sat around 92-93.

By the end of the 2012 season, Lincecum led the National League in four categories: starts, losses, wild pitches, and earned runs. His ERA had ballooned to 5.18, and when San Francisco again made it to the postseason, Lincecum was no longer the ace. But rather than sulk, the indomitable joy tornado moved to the bullpen, amassing a 0.69 ERA in 5 postseason appearances, striking out 17 and allowing just three hits and two walks in 13 innings of relief work. His one start was a Game 4 NLCS loss against the Cardinals.

He is asked how he spent his time away from baseball, and he holds his cards close to his chest. “Eh, just thinking about baseball,” he says. “Obviously, I’ve contemplated whether it was a good time to leave the game or not, but I think I owed it to myself to keep trying. I feel like I’m still at the age and I still have the youth and the will to kind of go after it again. As far as the game goes, I don’t feel like I’m too old, but I still feel like there’s a finite number of years left to make the most of it.”

All athletes, especially those who have made it into their thirties in their respective sports, are aware of the fickle, fleeting affection of the game towards its stars that burn, first bright, then out. The words seem heavier today, however, given the circumstances. “There’s a finite number of years left…”

Lincecum idolized his older brother as the two grew up playing baseball. Before Tim, there was Sean, stockier and without the golden arm of his younger brother, but still in love with the game. Sean had run-ins with the law during his time living in Florida, but according to Tim, his brother spent the last part of his life coaching kids, wearing the number 44. Tim has only ever worn 55 on his back, but he says that won’t be the case in 2018. “The number behind that is, that was my brother’s number as he became a coach, and was around kids a lot, so… he was a big part of my life, and I don’t know, I just want to feel like I can carry him out there, and honor him, in a way, and have him close.”

By “the number behind that,” he means “the story behind that”, but the bog-gremlin has hidden the word, for now.

One remarkable thing about a career full of them is that Tim Lincecum didn’t throw a no-hitter until he was a few years past his prime. And then he threw two of them, both against the San Diego Padres, and both in seasons (2013 and 2014) where he was not a particularly good pitcher. 2013 was at least an improvement on 2012—his strikeouts increased, his walks and hits decreased, and his FIP was a respectable 3.74—but 2014 was a bad season, despite a 12-9 record. His ERA once again approached 5, his FIP was 4.31, and he threw just 155 2/3 innings, the fewest he had pitched in a season since his rookie year.

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In 2015, he pitched just 76 1/3 innings. On June 28, he was hit in the arm by a DJ LeMahieu comebacker. He threw the offending ball home to retire Chris Rusin, but was removed from the game. The next day, the kid who some experts predicted would flame out in a year due to his unorthodox delivery was placed on the disabled list for the first time in his nine-year career.

It got worse.

While he was on the DL, doctors discovered a degenerative condition in Lincecum’s hips. He would never pitch another game in a Giants uniform.

In 2016, his first “comeback” attempt was an abject failure. On August 5th, pitching against his hometown Seattle Mariners as a member of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Lincecum lasted just 3 1/3 innings, allowing six runs, all earned, on nine hits and two walks, striking out just one. When he was removed after a Seth Smith single, the Angels shut him down for the rest of the year. By November, he was again a free agent.

Then he was a ghost.

When next he resurfaced, it was thanks to Adam Ottavino, who posted the now-viral photo of the elusive Northwestern sasquatch, working out at Driveline. Gone was the fresh-faced, long haired kid.

Muscles > hype > showcase > Rangers.

“I think the hardest part about the last year and a half or so is—I think I made a comment a little bit about it yesterday to the media—all these birds are migrating south, and I feel like I’m kind of left behind,” Lincecum says about his year out of baseball.

He talks of strengthening his hips (“…trying to get that land leg to stabilize, and be able to use it the way I used it in the past“), pitching out of the bullpen (“This offseason when I was working on getting off the mound more often, it meant volumizing down on pitch counts, so I can get off (the mound) more often“) and being a teammate of Bartolo Colón and Adrian Beltré (“They’re well-respected, and they’ve earned that. With Bartolo, he was established as a closer, then now as a starter he’s done a really good job, especially as a guy at his age, to be able to go out there time and time again and produce. With Beltre, I was always a fan of him with the Mariners, growing up watching him at third base, it’s going to be nice to play with him.”)

Tim Lincecum on playing with Bartolo and Beltre, moving to the bullpen, and on whether or not he’ll be ready for Opening Day.

— Levi Weaver (@ThreeTwoEephus) March 7, 2018

Volumizing isn’t a word, Bartolo Colón has zero career saves, and Adrian Beltre signed with Seattle when Lincecum was 20 years old. The bog-gremlin has rearranged the cargo, slightly. That’s not a criticism, that’s an explanation. He’s appearing in front of cameras just six days after the passing of his older brother. It’s going to be messy for awhile.

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It would be a cheap comparison to point at his year away from the game and suggest that it is indicative of his ability to overcome adversity. The grief of a brother lost is a new and different devastation, and while Lincecum’s sheer determination has brought him back to the game he loves, experts tell you that it takes a year to process the tsunami of grief that lands on you when a loved one passes. They tell you that you won’t remember much from that year, like an extended and relentless concussion. The train will stop and start, lurch and heave, shake and shudder until it emerges from the tunnel on the other side of an impossible mountain.

Make it through the tunnel, conventional wisdom will tell you, and while you will still catch a whiff of mildew from time to time, you will learn to ignore the bog-gremlin’s signals to stop for another checkpoint.

Who knows where Tim Lincecum will emerge when the light at the end of the tunnel grows large enough to allow for peripheral sight. His FanGraphs projections expect him to be worse in 2018 than he was in any year but 2016. But his fastball is back to the 93mph range, just as it was when he was a borderline-unstoppable reliever in the 2012 World Series.

Furthermore, it will be his first time to be a relief pitcher from the opening gun. There’s no predicting what’s next for Tim Lincecum.

Just the way it’s always been.