ARLINGTON, Texas — He is not Curt Schilling, filled with burly bombast, or Josh Beckett, a gruff and scruffy Texan. He is not Bob Gibson, a snarling intimidator, or Jack Morris, a mustachioed gunslinger straight from the Old West.

If Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants is like any other World Series pitching star, it might be Orel Hershiser, another skinny right-hander wearing No. 55 who closed out a World Series on the road in Game 5.

But Hershiser, who did it for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988, had a gangly mien that suggested professor, if not preacher. He sang hymns to himself in the dugout to stay calm. Lincecum sings, too. He prefers rap or hard rock, befitting his image as a skater boy or a sullen teenager, anything but who he is: the dominant pitcher of his era.

Lincecum, 26, has two Cy Young Awards, the most strikeouts in baseball history for a pitcher’s first four seasons, and a signature World Series performance Monday that lifted the Giants to their first title since 1954, when they played in New York. Lincecum overpowered the Texas Rangers for eight innings, allowing three hits and a run with 10 strikeouts in a 3-1 victory.

“He’s had some of those spectacular games that just leave your mouth open,” said the Giants’ pitching coach Dave Righetti. “But under these circumstances, in this ballpark, against this team, in this setting, there’s no way you can rank something higher than that.”

The day before, Lincecum had slumped in his chair in the interview room, dour and downcast, as if summoned from recess to detention. His shoulder-length hair, straight and jet black, framed a pale face that never smiled. He did not wear his Giants cap. Lincecum seems to wear it only when absolutely necessary, and then, always the same one, so faded it is a kind of grayish black, crusted with the sweat of four furious seasons.

Lincecum insisted Sunday that he had not even thought about the possibility that, in one day, he could be pitching the Giants to a championship. He was treating it just like another game, which everyone says but no one believes.

Yet before Game 5 — after Madison Bumgarner had worked eight shutout innings Sunday to push the Giants to the edge of glory — Lincecum lived his promise. He did not prowl the clubhouse like a caged beast, or pore over video as if cramming for a final exam. He did what he always does.

“Timmy’s Timmy,” said fellow starter Matt Cain, as if that explained it all. “He’s a guy that’s relaxed, having fun and doing his thing.”

Outfielder Cody Ross, who scored on Edgar Renteria’s decisive three-run homer off Cliff Lee in the seventh inning Monday, said Lincecum seemed normal before the clincher. Normal, that is, for Lincecum; perhaps not for anyone else.

“He was dancing around, singing, doing all his stuff 40 minutes before the game, like he wasn’t pitching,” Ross said. “That’s just how he is. He’s a happy-go-lucky guy, doesn’t let anything affect him. He’s a bulldog; that’s why he did what he did.”

Funny term, bulldog. That was Hershiser’s nickname, and that is Lincecum’s pet, which had the run of the Giants’ clubhouse during the regular season. Lincecum named him Cy and feeds him from a dish in his locker at AT&T Park.

Lincecum dresses in the space that once belonged to Barry Bonds, who is largely scorned for his role in baseball’s steroids scandal. Lincecum was charged last off-season with marijuana possession, but that seems to have endeared him even more to certain fans in San Francisco, where a popular T-shirt bears the slogan, “Let Tim Smoke.”

In any case, Lincecum apologized for the arrest — and paid the $513 fine — while Bonds awaits trial on federal perjury charges. While Bonds was suspiciously bulky, the Giants list Lincecum at 163 pounds and a generous 5 feet 11 inches. His slight stature is proof, it would seem, that boys of any size might achieve astounding success.

“The kid’s just got so much heart,” said Barry Zito, the veteran left-hander, who sat beside Lincecum for the final out. “He’s obviously got the stuff, but that’s not enough. He’s got the intangibles.”

Maybe so, but Lincecum earned his nickname, the Freak, for his extraordinary athleticism. He was a quarterback and cornerback in high school, a point guard on the basketball team and a natural at golf. He can walk on his hands and do back flips.

But baseball was his destiny, shaped in the suburbs of Seattle by his father, Chris, who worked for Boeing. Chris built his son’s unusual delivery: back to the plate, glove raised to the sky, then a whirling of hips and a stride, wrote Roger Angell of The New Yorker, like “a January commuter arching over six feet of slush.”

The hitter sees that jumble of moving parts, then must prepare for a riding fastball, a curveball or a slider/changeup that is virtually indistinguishable for much of its flight, the slider tumbling, the changeup fading, both from a similar trajectory and at similar speeds.

Lincecum has had the changeup for years. The slider — he called it his go-to pitch in Game 5 — he developed late this summer, after an alarming August in which he went 0-5 with a 7.82 earned run average.

No Giant in 18 years had gone 0-5 or worse in a month, with an ERA that high. Lincecum tried changing his mechanics, the bedrock of his greatness, and spoke often by phone with his father. As the Giants scrambled to catch the National League West-leading San Diego Padres, Lincecum’s woes held them back.

“It was like a major crisis, and for good reason,” Righetti said. “The 49ers weren’t playing yet, we were in the middle of the season, trying to make it, and our best guy, supposedly, was going through his struggles. It was a major story.”

Righetti continued: “It’s not easy. He’s a young guy with a lot on his shoulders. For him to regroup like he did was tremendous. Tremendous fortitude. That’s what you’re most proud of. The outcome, sometimes, we can’t control. But how he went about it the last two months, I’m obviously very proud of him.”

Lincecum credited a new workout, focused more on his legs and core muscles, with smoothing his mechanics and invigorating his preparation.

“After that,” he said, “it became more of just what I wanted to throw as opposed to how I was going to throw it.”

It also kept him strong down the stretch, with a 9-2 record and a 2.17 ERA from Sept. 1 through the end of the World Series. Over 78 2/3 innings, Lincecum had 95 strikeouts and 17 walks, and opponents hit .188.

“Unbelievable,” center fielder Aaron Rowand said after Game 5. “That’s the guy you saw win two Cy Youngs in a row. That was him tonight. He was on his game, throwing his off-speed stuff, pinpointing his fastball, keeping those guys off balance. I tell you what, Timmy’s one of the best in the game, there’s a reason. When you’ve got one of the best in the game on their game, it’s going to be tough.”

Most of the Giants were tough on the Rangers, whose power-packed lineup hit .190 in the World Series and did not score at all off Cain, Bumgarner or closer Brian Wilson.

But it was Lincecum who worked the clincher, Lincecum who won twice, and Lincecum who now stands among the World Series greats. Did this feel better than winning two Cy Young Awards? Of course it did.

“This is far better,” Lincecum said Monday, in the tunnel outside the Giants’ clubhouse. “It’s a team effort, put together, and everybody’s done their part, everybody’s been a hero on a given day.”

Then he called the Giants a great team, using a vulgarity for emphasis. It was Lincecum’s exit line, and as he darted back to the locker room party, he smiled, as if he had gotten away with something.

And he had. The San Francisco Giants are champions for the first time, and Lincecum led them there, doing it his way till the end.