The life of Brian

Nolan Reimold homered with the count full in the seventh inning, his first of the spring. He singled earlier and scored from first base on a double. A good night for the left fielder. Twins 4, Orioles 3. Brian Roberts struck out in all three at-bats tonight before leaving the game. "It felt good just to put a uniform on and go play. Certainly it's different than BP," he said. "My body felt pretty good. Just a matter of getting in the box and seeing live pitching. But my body, it felt pretty good." Asked about his timing at the plate, he replied, "Obviously not stellar. My last at-bat, actually I started to finally feel a lot more comfortable in the box. My first two, I was pretty clueless. But that's the way it is every year. It doesn't take long. It only takes a couple of at-bats just to kind of get your timing going, see the velocity. That's the biggest thing. You just haven't seen velocity up until this point. I don't think it takes very long." Tomorrow will bring the next test for Roberts as he gauges how his back responded to tonight's activity. "Yeah, sure, but I didn't do a whole lot, so I can't imagine it will be too bad," he said. "If I had been running around a lot more, diving and stuff, but I didn't really. Swinging, I don't think will have any ill effects. I can't imagine that it would." Facing Scott Baker actually was a relief to Roberts, though the right-hander took a no-hitter into the fifth inning. "Actually, I thought it was a good guy to start against," Roberts said. "Not that he's not good, but he's usually around the strike zone and isn't throwing 98. You know you're not going to be ducking and diving all the time." The two keys from tonight: Roberts says he felt fine physically and still expects to play on April 6.