There's only so many times you can talk about Tim Lincecum getting hit hard and almost knocked out of a game. Except for this time, because he literally got hit hard and came close to getting knocked out of the game.
It happened when Lincecum threw a wild pitch to Jemile Weeks in the fourth inning and forgot to cover home plate. Buster Posey lost the ball behind the backstop and Collin Cowgill of the A's rounded third, headed to home and ended up colliding with Lincecum.
"Nothing bad," Lincecum said. "Just rattled a little bit, but nothing bad."
According to MLB.com, the official injury is a hyperextended thumb in Lincecum's left (non-throwing) hand. There was no mention, however, of "bruised pride" or "battered ego."
So, yeah, Timmy got knocked the heck out. Hopefully he'll just get some baseball sense knocked into his head -- Carl Steward of the San Francisco Chronicle observes, interestingly, that Lincecum was scuffling in 2008 when he took a nasty shot at the plate and came back to strike out 11 over seven shutout innings.
Here's a GIF of the slide/collision, courtesy of SB Nation Bay Area.
Perhaps Tim should be forced to watch this on repeat until he can complete his second quality start of the season.
