SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Slowly, the tuft of hair on Tim Lincecum's top lip is beginning to resemble a proper mustache. A couple wisps jut to the left and a few more to the right, like a GPS sent them the wrong way. This is understandable. Never has Lincecum allowed his facial hair to progress much past stubble, because never, he figured, was it capable of doing so.

"I'm gonna stick with it," he says. "It's never a plan. It's not like a girl planning a study-abroad trip. I'm just gonna see where it takes me. I could see myself in one of those old vans with a ladder on the back and a bubble window."

He chuckles, aware that the line between dreadful porn 'stache and legitimate, honest moustache – the O gives it legitimacy and honesty, you know – is indeed fine. Time and grooming have pushed it into the acceptable territory, like an old-timey '70s rocker look, which Lincecum pulls off with style because he's Tim Lincecum and ever since he arrived in the major leagues seven years ago, he radiated panache. It didn't just define him; it carried him to two Cy Young awards, two World Series titles and, for a time, the title of the world's greatest pitcher.

No longer is Lincecum that pitcher. His fastball lost the zip that once propelled it at 97 mph, and it took with it the ability to blow away hitters with pure force. It is the natural evolution of a pitcher, Father Time exacting his pound of flesh. And it forces a binary choice, grow or fail, that weeds out the stubborn and rewards the humble.

For two years, Lincecum resisted what deep down he understood: He needed to evolve. This offseason, coming off his second consecutive substandard year, Lincecum started that transformation. The mustache is merely a physical representation of something much bigger, much deeper.

If he no longer could be the pitcher he once was, he no longer could be the person he once was, either.

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The reconstruction of Tim Lincecum began in an empty warehouse off the 405 in Kirkland, Wash. It was him and tall ceilings and support beams and a strip of green turf and a portable carbon-fiber mound and a net and a bag of major league baseballs bought at an athletic-supply store in Redmond. And it was the silence in which he could remind himself of who he wanted to be instead of who he used to be.

Five days a week, Lincecum would drive the 20 minutes from his home near the University of Washington and throw the balls into the net. Sometimes friends would accompany him. Sometimes he went at it alone. In past years, he worked out at Dempsey Indoor Center on the UW campus, inviting stares, the sort of which he preferred to avoid, especially in such an imperative offseason.

"I just tried to eliminate other factors," Lincecum says. "I wanted to escape."

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Leaving behind his past took nerve. Pitching is a lonely pursuit. Even though eight players surround him, the pitcher lives inside a bubble atop the 10-inch mound. He sees each plate appearance as him against a hitter, a one-on-one game set up for him to master. He regulates the tempo, dictates the pace, controls the action. When a pitcher can throw like Lincecum, with a sizzling fastball and disappearing changeup and wipeout slider, the advantage grows exponentially. All of the things those without such gifts ask themselves – Did I prepare enough? Did I put myself in the best position to win? Did I execute with the necessary precision? – are immaterial.

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