This is an excerpt from a story originating at Zone Coverage. Please click here to read the full story.

One thing I really like about baseball is that there’s always just so much going on. If you don’t pay attention 100 percent, you can easily miss something.

One thing I hone in on is weird personality quirks or tics players have while on the field. Josh Willingham used to open his eyes really wide before stepping into the batter’s box. Addison Reed immediately props his cap atop his head the second he walks off the mound because he hates how they feel pulled all the way down.

But the other night, I tweeted that one of my favorite things this season was the “Bobby Wilson monocle” celebration every time he gets a hit.

This is what it looks like:

To me, it looks like Mr. Peanut and perhaps could signify a seeing-eye single. In baseball slang, a seeing-eye single is a ball that just sneaks through the infield. In some circles, you might hear it called a “Texas Leaguer,” but the general idea is all the same.

But when I approached Wilson’s locker to talk to him about a completely unrelated subject — for a column that’ll come out sometime this weekend — I figured I might as well shoot my shot and find out what it was all about.

I wasn’t expecting much of an answer. Wilson isn’t exactly Chris Gimenez as far as quotes go, but he’s a friendly face in the clubhouse who is always willing to talk shop. In this business, you grow to like the guys who let you put away the recorder and notebook as much as those who fill them up.

Wilson is one of those guys, but it isn’t like I served him a hunk of choice beef waiting for him to sear it and send it back medium-rare. It was me lobbing him a softball to break the ice for the conversation I was really hoping to have.

“It’s actually a good story,” Wilson said as he reached into his locker. “I was going through an especially difficult stretch offensively, and I went up to (Twins radio voice and former player) Danny Gladden and just said, ‘Danny, I need a hug.'”

Wilson got his hug, but not before he got an education.

“You ever heard of the Eye of the Tiger?” Gladden quizzed Wilson. Wilson thought for a while, and was like, “Uh, you mean like the song from Rocky or whatever?”