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Kevin Czerwinski is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.

TRENTON, N.J. - There's black, there's white and then there's Matt DeSalvo, who by his own admission, enjoys living life in a shade of gray.
A pitcher by trade, DeSalvo is currently hawking his wares for Double-A Trenton of the Eastern League, where he is scheduled to start on Sunday against New Britain. He's as much a thinker as he is a pitcher, though, and not just some clubhouse philosophizer. At 24, though, he's far too young to be expounding on life's great experiences.

Rather, he's looking for answers, whether it's on how to fix his mechanics on the mound or understanding the all too complex machinations of love. He works Thunder pitching coach Dave Eiland on the former. As for the latter, he's taken matters into his own hands, authoring a book, "Loves Travels," in an attempt to find some sort of understanding.

"It was just something to me that I was curious about my whole time growing up," DeSalvo said. "The whole concept of love is kind of confusing. It changes constantly. And I wanted to express myself more than anything else. I wanted to explain something to myself I guess.

"It's all personal stuff, just ideas. Not everyone is the same. There are a lot of stories out there, and I just started writing. I wanted to get a laugh, and I wanted to tell a story but then I thought maybe I should write a book. So one day I went to Wal-Mart and bought a whole bunch of notebooks. I outlined it, and it all came out."

That was last year during Spring Training. It took DeSalvo six months of writing on buses, taking a few minutes every night to jot down ideas, using what little free time he had in the clubhouse, to put his thoughts on paper. DeSalvo, a Division III All-American at Marietta College, studied environmental science in school, not journalism or literature, so this undertaking was certainly foreign to him.

The book, a romance novel, has some baseball in it but DeSalvo says the theme centers around love. It's not autobiographical, it's just him detailing some of the philosophies he has about one of life's great mysteries.

"I have ideas about the kind of person I'd like to be," DeSalvo said. "So I molded the character after myself. Whether I really am that character or not, I don't know. The whole concept of love changes, though, from when you are younger to when you get older. Regardless of your age, you just don't understand it.

"It's not close to being published. If someone wants to work with me, maybe it could be. Maybe certain things need to be spiced up with better wording. I don't have a great vocabulary. Maybe if I had another author look at it. I'm a baseball player, not really a writer. I still think I need to work on it a lot more."

When he's not tinkering with the book, DeSalvo is tinkering with his delivery. He's 0-0 with a 5.40 ERA through three starts heading into his next scheduled outing Sunday against New Britain. He went 6-3 with a 1.43 ERA in 13 games last season for Tampa in the Florida State League. After holding the opposition to a .176 batting average he was promoted to Trenton, where the road has been considerably more difficult.

DeSalvo went 2-2 with a 6.59 ERA for the Thunder last summer, missing a large chunk of time with a stress fracture in his lower lumbar region. Those struggles have continued over into this season.

"I think a lot, and I guess I have the same approach to the game," DeSalvo said. "I find myself thinking too much, specifically with my mechanics. I haven't been able to settle on an arm slot, and I find myself falling forward. You start off relying on muscle memory instead of just letting things take place.

"That's one of those gray areas. If you rely simply on your body, you might be out of the game by the fifth inning. If you're careful, you can let your mind take you to the seventh or the eighth inning. It's something I need to work on."

DeSalvo certainly has the credentials to become a Major League pitcher. Though he went undrafted out of Marietta, he was tabbed Baseball America's 2003 Small College Player of the Year after going 13-2 with 157 strikeouts. He set the NCAA all-time record for wins (53) and strikeouts (603).

The Yankees and Brewers pursued him as a free agent, a race the Bombers won. Now, he's hopeful of becoming one of the few pitching prospects that actually makes it to the Bronx before getting traded. First, however, there is the matter of working through his current problem.

"We went back to the basics with him in his last bullpen and just concentrated on him getting on top of the ball," Eiland said. "We did a little drill where you throw to certain points at the plate and he hit 15-of-15. I think sometimes he thinks too much and overanalyzes but that's a little natural. He has to let his natural ability take over.

"A lot of times he just doesn't give himself credit. He's had a couple of games here when it hasn't been up to his standard and now it's just a matter of getting his confidence back."

The Yankees still project DeSalvo as a starter. Mark Newman, the club's senior vice president of baseball operations, said that with his repertoire, DeSalvo is well suited for his current role. Eiland agreed but said he wouldn't be surprised if the bullpen was part of DeSalvo's future.

"He has the pitches to be a starter, but he also has a very resilient arm," Eiland said. "I can see him pitching out of the pen. He never gets sore and never complains of soreness and he wants to pitch every day. Right now, though, he's projected as a starter. And now that we have his delivery straightened out, he feels better about that."

DeSalvo will find out Sunday if he's truly gotten his mechanically problems solved. As for the love part, he may never know