"Late last week I walked into the clubhouse at the Mariners' spring-training complex expecting to talk to Eric Byrnes. Heard he was a great guy and a terrific interview. Read that he was a surfer who married a Miss California USA and owned three bulldogs. Seemed like a can't-miss column.

But I couldn't find him and when I finally did, he was sandwiched between a couple of teammates, and it looked claustrophobic in his corner of the clubhouse, so I just figured I'd catch him at another time.

Milton Bradley was my Plan B, and I'll be honest about that -- he was actually more like a Plan Z. When I first approached him early last week, he said he didn't have time to talk, which was fine -- he was getting ready for practice.

"Can I just introduce myself?" I asked, and Bradley turned away, which was his way of saying "no."

I wanted to give him another shot because he's Milton Bradley fercrisesakes, maybe the most controversial acquisition in team history -- or maybe not, but he's in that conversation at least. Besides, there was a good possibility I might have caught him at the wrong time. Gregg Bell of the Associated Press spoke to him five minutes later and wrote a story that got a lot of exposure on the Internet, the one in which Bradley called himself the Kanye West of baseball.

The second time I approached Bradley, he was all by himself, preparing for another morning practice. I asked him for an interview, and he seemed reluctant but so was I. If he had blown me off a second time, I would have just assumed he was the jerk I perceived him to be, and it took awhile until I was convinced that he's not.

"Milton, I'm just trying to find out more about you as a person," I said. "So what do you like to do for fun?"

I thought that was a better ice-breaker than: "Milton, I'm just wondering if you've paid off that $44,000 your Chicago landlord says you still owe him." But even when thrown the softest softball of a question, Bradley remained as frigid as Fairbanks."