This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park’s Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MINNEAPOLIS -- There’s a new addition to Royce Lewis' locker in the Twins’ clubhouse this season: a small, hand-painted panel of a kid with a baseball glove, head back and mouth open to depict yelling. On one side of the kid is a little heart; on the other is a frowny face.

Lewis painted it himself, he said, as part of a date night with his fiancée, Sam Hobert. He describes it as a representation of his love-hate relationship with baseball.

Right now, it’s hate.

He sees his friends having fun and pursuing a club record winning streak. He feels like he’s healing from his right quad strain from Opening Day, but the Twins aren’t telling him too much about his recovery as he waits -- and he doesn’t like talking to doctors anymore, because all they give him is bad news, it seems, about how he still can’t play baseball with his friends.

“It's the most challenging rehab I've ever had,” Lewis said.

And that’s coming from the guy who spent the bulk of two years recovering from two different ACL surgeries on the same knee.

Though Lewis’ road back to the field will only be measured in weeks, not months -- especially since he’s taking up to 80 swings in the cage per day, jogging on the warning track and doing some light fielding -- this recovery is much tougher mentally, he says, because there’s no concrete timeline on it as he navigates it himself.

“I feel like when they're on the road, I'm really not a part of the team,” Lewis said. “That's really hard. So when they're home, it's great. … I get to enjoy the presence and hang out with my friends again.”

When he was coming back from the ACL tears, he had a sense for the milestones he needed to meet, and when he should expect to meet them -- a 9-12 month timeline the first time, a 12-14 month timeline the second time.

“It's a lot easier on you when you have a carrot dangling over your head,” Lewis said.

But now, he’s just waiting until the doctors clear him to play. He’s not sure when that will be. He’s five and a half weeks into what was expected to be a two-month timeline at minimum, but that depends on how he heals. He feels good, but he reluctantly acknowledges that he’s still waiting for the torn muscle to reattach.

He understands the Twins and doctors are just taking care of him. He’s been a fast healer in the past, so that perhaps colors his expectations.

But all the time missed is starting to wear even the optimistic Lewis down.

“It's just a fact of, like, how I feel, and emotionally, that hurts,” Lewis said. “I love this game. I want to play. I just miss the game. I would do anything to go play every day, just like I was when I was a little kid.”

So much of Lewis’ relationship with the world -- and with baseball -- revolves around love, and it should.

He’s just waiting for the pendulum to swing back that way -- and waiting, and waiting.