My mother didn’t like to hear profanity, and she certainly never spoke it. She had always told us that swearing was the sign of a lackluster vocabulary and, worse, a stunted imagination. “There are so many interesting words to use, along or in combination,” she said, “that I don’t know why anyone would fall back on one-syllable obscenities.

Sometimes t feels like I live in a circus and all the animals are loose.

Sometimes when your life seems most out of control, you know there’s a direction. I don’t mean you can’t have free will – in fact, that can be the most important part.

All he does is drive in runs. If he gets 90 RBI out of the seven or eight hole in the lineup, we'll be receptive to that.

He's got a history of power. His average amount of home runs would lead our team. We feel pretty good about this move overall.

He's never been one to micromanage. Yet he's about as competitive a guy as I've seen.

I don't want to hear about him coaching. His No. 1 goal right now should be playing ? getting to Triple-A and then getting to Minnesota.

I don't think anybody is totally opposed to it. But it wouldn't be ideal. You don't want him sitting down in the bullpen and only pitching one inning at a time.

If he's not stretched out, that's going to be an issue. But we can't request a guy not go. I encourage him to go. Let's take the high road here. This might be a good thing for the young man. He's going to be around very competitive baseball, and hopefully he'll get very meaningful innings.

If I was a left-handed pitcher coming into this camp, I'd be very excited.