Lincecum hit 102 mph - Burriss felt the heat
Ron Kroichick
Sunday, July 6, 2008
(07-05) 16:34 PDT -- Giants infielder Emmanuel Burriss broke into a wide smile when asked about his Cape Cod League confrontation with Tim Lincecum.
They crossed paths in the summer of 2005, after Lincecum's sophomore season at the University of Washington and Burriss' sophomore season at Kent State. In his third start for the Harwich Mariners in the elite summer league, Lincecum took a line drive off his head and was sidelined for nearly a week. He came back as Harwich's closer, ready to let it fly.
Burriss, playing for the Orleans Cardinals, watched from the on-deck circle one night as Lincecum's fastball - previously clocked in the low-to-mid 90s - began creeping higher. They were playing in the one Cape Cod ballpark with a radar gun, and it showed Lincecum reaching 96 ... and 98 ... and then 100 ... and then 102!
"Everything kind of clicked," Lincecum recalled. "It's not like I wasn't giving the same effort when I was starting. I think adrenaline just takes over, something clicks in your body and you hit another peak. And you're feeling it."
Burriss felt the power of those eye-popping numbers: He wondered if he really wanted to step into the batter's box against a baby-faced kid throwing Nolan Ryan-like heat. "I don't need this," he remembered thinking. But he hung in there as Lincecum unleashed fastball after howling fastball, the count finally reaching 3-and-2. Burriss, naturally, expected another fastball on the next pitch.
But rather than merely tell the story during a conversation in the third-base dugout at China Basin, he hopped off the bench and demonstrated. His smile still wide, bat in hand, Burriss simulated the sickly swing he took on that night three years earlier. Halfway through the swing, Burriss' knees buckled and he went sprawling to the dugout floor, laughing uproariously.
"And then I'm on the ground!" he said.
Lincecum had thrown him a 94-mph split-fingered fastball, Burriss' teammates later told him. The ball dived into the dirt at the last possible moment. Burriss had no chance.
