Spring training baseball got underway yesterday, thank God.  I listened to an inning or two of the  Braves-Tigers match while eating lunch.  Then, in the evening, before cooking supper I checked in on the Red Sox-Twins game for about ten minutes.  The Twins coasted to a 5-2 victory, with their starter Glen Perkins throwing two scoreless innings.

   In this morning's Minneapolis Star-Tribune, columnist Jim Souhan quotes Twins manager Ron Gardenhire on Perkins, a promising young pitcher who has had some attitude problems in the past.

"He was just a young guy who really didn't have a plan yet," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "He had a great arm, but he had to learn work habits ... He was lazy in his fundamentals, and sloppy ... but it was his mannerisms that made you want to say, 'hey, put a little more into it.'"

I thought it a brilliant description of a character.  Haven't you encountered this fellow a dozen times before, either in real life or on the pages of a novel?  Portrait of the ballplayer as a young man....