FORT MYERS, Fla. – “Are you optimistic?”

Mike Lowell’s answer is swift and definitive.

“Absolutely.”

While whispers, guesses, and proclamations born out of both have been circulated in regards to Lowell’s offseason, there has always been one piece of the equation that has been missing – the player’s own voice. Until now.

“I’m pretty happy,” said Lowell, speaking publicly for the first time since early December. “I’m optimistic and actually very excited to get into baseball stuff instead of rehab stuff.”

When Lowell makes his entrance into spring training Monday, it will be a noteworthy checkpoint for what has been an uneven offseason journey. First came the surgery on a torn hip labrum, coupled with the subsequent rehab. Then came the drama that accompanied the Red Sox’ pursuit of free agent first baseman Mark Teixeira and the possible trade of Lowell that was perceived as a necessary consequence of such a deal.

Thursday night Lowell answered many of the questions that hovered over his recent past, present and immediate future.

To summarize: the soon-to-be 35-year-old progressed rapidly from his surgery for the first seven weeks of rehab, suffered a bit of a setback in mid-January after trying to jump his progression ahead a bit, was reassured by his doctor during a check-up in New York midway through January and now feels confident that he is on pace to land in the starting lineup come Opening Day. This week he will have hit three times, including a session against live pitching for the first time. He has jogged lightly, but hasn’t run (per doctors’ orders), and is on target with his throwing program.

As for those trade rumors stemming from the Red Sox’ pursuit of Teixeira, much like his other obstacles this winter, Lowell isn’t going to forget that saga any time soon.

“I think it’s only human nature (to be upset) when you’re given the choice (to sign) in more than one place and you end up signing in a place where you proclaim to enjoy the baseball and everything and you look forward to being there for at least three more years,” said Lowell, referring to the three-year, $37.5 million deal he inked with the Red Sox after the 2007 season. “Then after one year, for there to be all this talk … the writing was on the wall.

“I think Teixeira would have been fine, and I would have been the one traded. And that’s the business of baseball,” he continued. “But it’s only human nature, and the natural reaction is to feel hurt, and I definitely was. But that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to play, that I’m not excited to be part of this team with the guys on the field I see day to day. But that’s the totally normal reaction and that’s definitely what I had.

“I think I always try to use anything I see as a negative as motivation. Every negative I think should be turned into a positive.”

Lowell clearly isn’t ready to put the Teixeira scenario too far in the rear-view mirror, but the other bit of discomfort that the slugger experienced within the winter months – that stemming from his injury – is getting further and further away all the time.

By the time Lowell arrives in Fort Myers, along with the man who has headed up his rehabilitation in the Miami area, Ronnie Yacoub, he will be approximately where the experts thought he might land upon the patient’s first diagnosis.

“I think they’re going to do an evaluation and see what I’ve been doing and what will be in the baseball progression,” he said. “I will be the determining factor. If I wake up all right I’ll do more. But I can’t put a timetable on it. Obviously our goal is to be playing games in spring training to be ready for Opening Day. That’s the goal.

“Even the discomfort I feel now, during all the stretching and all the things I have to pay more attention to, I’m in nowhere near the pain I was last year, so I look at it as a big plus.”

Up until early January everything was positive for Lowell. He had glided through the first two months following the late-October surgery and was anxious to get out of the pool and onto dry land. As it turned out, he was perhaps too anxious.

“I think we tried to do stuff outside that might have been a little too early, and that’s when I went to New York,” said Lowell of his visit with Dr. Bryan Kelly, who had helped perform the surgery on the third baseman. “They had a check-up, but they also wanted to ease my mind. They told me that the people who typically get this surgery aren’t as active as a baseball player might be so sometime in the first seven weeks they run into a setback. They said I was almost a victim of my own success because the first seven weeks went so smoothly and I kept pushing.

“They had told me right after the surgery I was going to run into setbacks. But when I didn’t feel it after the seven weeks went by I got a little excited. But, you know, we’ve managed to get the swelling down and get on track. I still think I’m on the track for what everybody was hoping.”

Lowell has had a great deal of peace of mind since that trip to New York, which eventually might be considered a turning point in his quest to be ready for the Red Sox’ opener April 6 at Fenway Park.

“(Kelly) had mentioned to me in the 1,200 surgeries he had done, in four cases there had been a re-growth of a bone spur. So first he wanted to eliminate that and, honestly, I didn’t believe in the percentages because they told me I was one in 250,000 who got testicular cancer and I beat that one so I didn’t think that four in 1,200 was all that great,” Lowell quipped. “We took X-rays the first minute I was there and the X-rays were exactly how it was after the season, which Dr. Kelly said was very positive.

“That eased my mind a little bit because you don’t want that one thing where you have to worry about what the solution is going to be, where they might have to go in again and you’re really going to have some trouble. They said it was just inflammation on a weight-bearing joint.”

Lowell was forced back into the pool while integrating a more religious routine of massaging the surgically repaired hip.

Three weeks ago he began his hitting work, at first using a batting tee once a week. Then, two weeks ago, came two different hitting sessions, leading up to three last week. And just this week came the chance to hit live pitching, albeit in a batting practice setting.

It wasn’t where he would typically want to be just days before the start of spring training, but all things considered, it wasn’t a bad scenario.

“I’ve got to do the progression, but I want to get ready to play baseball,” he said. “I can say, ‘Yeah, I can hit,’ but it will be hard if I haven’t seen live pitching. But I feel good.”