Tim Lincecum, the diminutive power pitcher known variously as Seabiscuit, Tiny Tim and, most memorably, the Freak, slid behind the wheel of his silver Mercedes-Benz on a recent afternoon, sipping a Red Bull. His hair, which he hadn't cut since leading the San Francisco Giants to their first World Series in more than 50 years - and didn't intend to cut anytime soon unless his manager, Bruce Bochy, ordered otherwise - was pulled back into a ponytail. A mustache, if the underseeded patch of grass beneath his nose could be called that, had sprouted up during the off-season, giving him the aspect of a teenager trying to avoid getting carded.

''That desk manager is really sexy,'' Lincecum's agent, Rick Thurman, who had flown up from Los Angeles for the day, volunteered from the back seat as we emerged from the basement garage of Lincecum's apartment building, a 30-story glass tower in downtown Seattle.

''The one with short, black hair?'' Lincecum asked. ''Yeah, she's good-looking, but she posted on Twitter that she saw me walking around in my boxers. That kind of pissed me off.''

Lincecum powered up his iPod and started singing along in full-throated falsetto to a cheesy electro-pop song, the Far East Movement's ''Rocketeer,'' nailing every lyric - ''Up, up here we go/Where we stop nobody knows'' - as he weaved through traffic.

It has been said that baseball is a boy's game played by men. Whoever coined this phrase had obviously not seen Tim Lincecum grinning goofily in the dugout between innings. Most starting pitchers hew to strict pregame routines. Meals are carefully chosen and timed. Fifteen minutes before one of his first big-league starts, Lincecum was spotted tucking into a Philly cheese steak on the clubhouse couch in his underpants and shower shoes. Lincecum also doesn't draw the customary invisible force field around his locker. ''Most pitchers on game days are like, 'Leave me alone, let me do my thing,' but I'm like, 'Guys, you can talk to me, we c...