Jim Thome slapped on the eye black, picked up his glove and trotted out to Robin Roberts Field, behind the two more heavily populated fields where games were being played at the Carpenter Complex in Clearwater Thursday.

The 41-year-old first baseman-turned DH-turned first baseman again played seven innings in an intrasquad minor league game. Thome got plenty of chances Tuesday.


In one inning, back-to-back ground balls found him. In total, Thome saw five balls hit his way; he fielded each one of them cleanly.

And, for good measure, he launched an RBI double, too.

"My body is getting to the point where I’m starting to adapt to playing defense," Thome said.

Thursday marked Thome's fourth minor league game at first base this spring. It was his first game since playing in back-to-back contests Saturday and Sunday.

So what's next? Is a major league game in the near future?

"Close, we're getting close," Thome said. "After seven innings, I’ll be curious tomorrow to see how I feel. I think we’ve done this the right way. We’ve progressed, Charlie (Manuel) has been great with how he’s handled this... He makes the decisions... I would say over the next three, four days I’ll get over here (at Bright House Field). That’d be good. We’ll have to talk about that. I’d like to get one more game down here, maybe even two, whatever. Obviously Charlie is the boss so we’ll go off of him."