Sometimes you read a couple things consecutively and the first thing you read colors how you perceive the next thing.

This morning I read in the Pioneer Press about a low-grade dust-up between the Twins-trust and Pat Neshek regarding Neshek’s finger injury. The Twins were about to send Neshek to Rochester to clear room for Wilson Ramos to come cover for Joe Mauer, when Neshek invoked his right to go onto the Disabled List instead.     The Twins were surprised by the request and were not too happy.

In the words of the Pioneer Press, the Twins  “were unaware of Neshek’s ailment because he had not sought treatment recently.”  I’ll give the Twins enough credit to know that they weren’t truly “unaware” of the ailment, as Neshek’s finger had kept him sidelined for 10 days and in his second outing back blew a save by walking one batter and plunking the next.    However, they appeared to be trusting Neshek’s assessment to them that things were fine with the finger.

You see, Neshek had told reporters on Wednesday that his finger felt the best it had since it began hurting.

But on Sunday, after going on the DL, Neshek said his finger hindered his ability to grip the ball, but that earlier he didn’t want to make an excuse for his poor results.

I had read the Neshek injury saga right after reading Malcolm Gadwell’s excellent (as always) piece in the New Yorker about Operation Mincemeat – a World War II misinformation initiative that perhaps deked  the Germans into fortifying Sardinia and Greece while leaving Sicily underprotected from the Allied invasion that landed there from North Africa.    Galdwell uses the incident and others to demonstrate the limited value (and sometimes the liability) of espionage because information is hard to verify, those who do the verifying may have their own agendas, and that interpretation of espionage information is inherently ambiguous.

So I was thinking all “spy-vs-spy” by the time I read the Neshek news.

The Neshek injury confusion is the latest Twins version of the classic sports tension of trying to assess a player’s injury.  The Twins had a similar incident last year with Glen Perkins which has left some lingering hard feelings on both sides.

Injury assessment is difficult.   The player doesn’t want to complain, and above all wants to play, especially if demotion to the minor leagues is at issue.  Therefore he might not be the most objective judge of whether he should play.  Yet, he’s the one with the most important information  – that is, the information contained in his pain sensors.

Teams on the other hand have been known to frown upon those who don’t play through pain.  And if a player does report pain, it creates the dilemma of grounding him unnecessarily on one hand and having plenty of blame if you play the player and he aggravates the injury.

And after having just finished reading the Galdwell article with all its agent/double-agent overtones, how to interpret what a player is saying or not saying about pain doesn’t sound too different than interpreting intelligence information.    Now that I think of it, “Ron Gardenhire,”  ”Rick Anderson” and “Bill Smith” — don’t those names just sound like they belong with James Bond in the British Secret Intelligence Service, right there with James Bond.   And “Neshek” — well that sounds vaguely KGB, doesn’t it?    I imagine discussions like this deep in some war room of Twins Central Intelligence beneath Target Field:

Gardy:  Neshek says his finger is fine.  Let’s send him to Rochester.

Smith:  Players, they’re always trying to hide their injuries.  By saying it’s fine, Neshek finger isn’t fine.  Let’s put him on the DL.

Gardy:  But if Neshek knows that we know that players lie about injuries and he wants to lie about his injury, then he’d certainly tell us that it was fine so that we’d think it isn’t fine, just so he can lie to us, when it’s really fine.  Let’s send him to Rochester.

Smith:  Neshek would surely know that we’d know that he knows that we know that players lie about injuries and therefore, when he said he was fine, he …

Anderson (entering room):  Neshek just told me he wants to go on the DL.  He says it’s his right.

Smith:   He wants to go on the DL?  Does that mean his finger’s fine?  A hell, let’s just put him on the DL  I’m just tired of thinking about it.    Now, what do you think that Mauer guy’s trying to pull one on us when he says his heel hurts?