Freak Season is an intimate four-color photography book of San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum. In his first three full seasons in the major leagues, Lincecum has earned two Cy Young Awards and a World Series Championship. Contrary to his public image of rock-star pitcher, Lincecum is an introvert who keeps company mostly with childhood friends and shuns the spotlight.
Listen to Joan Ryan discuss the book with Marty Lurie on KNBR "The Sports Leader" radio.
He allowed unprecedented access to Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice during the 2010 season. What emerges from Fitzmaurice's photographs, and author Joan Ryan's accompanying text, is a fearless competitor whose knees buckle when he has to speak in public, a restless adolescent who can't sit still through a movie but has such hyper-focus on the mound that he sinks into what he describes as a sort of netherworld.
Freak Season takes us into the clubhouse and the dugout, into his home and hotel room. We see Lincecum during unguarded moments with teammates, friends and family. The book tells the story of one of the most remarkable and interesting athletes of our generation during the trials and triumphs of a historic championship season.
Joan Ryan is an award-winning journalist and author. Her third book, now available in paperback, The Water Giver: The Story of a Mother, a Son and Their Second Chance, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2009.
The Water Giver is a treasure. I set it aside until one night when I casually dipped in and then read it straight through. I was moved, enlightened and swept along by your pitch perfect and deeply personal narrative. I was a fan before but now I'm a moonie. Write on.—Tom Brokaw
Joan was a pioneer in sports journalism, becoming one of the first female sports columnists in the country. She covered every major sporting event from the Super Bowl and the World Series to the Olympics and championship fights. Her sports columns and features earned 13 Associated Press Sports Editors Awards, the National Headliner Award and the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Journalism Award, among other honors. She has been awarded the Fabulous Feminist Award by the San Francisco chapter of the National Organization for Women and was named A Woman Who Could Be President by the San Francisco League of Women Voters.
Her newspaper work spans 25 years, the last 22 in San Francisco. When she left sports, she wrote columns for the Style section, the Op-Ed pages and the Metro section. She left the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007 to pursue book projects and other opportunities.
Her first book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters (1995, Doubleday) was a controversial, ground-breaking expose that Sports Illustrated named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. It was one of the Top 50 Sports Books of All Time in the Guardian newspaper in London. The Sporting News chose it as one of the top three sports books of 1995.