[RebelYell]

Hey Amanda,
Sure miss you even when it's just for a few days.

Finished off Kansas City this afternoon and we'll be in a little before midnight. Still too late to have the kids wait up, but I'll get up and get them off to school for you tomorrow.

We've still got some drama swirling here. I didn't say anything about this to the reporters, but we had a couple of pitchers throwing 70 percent curve balls instead of the other way around. I've come to find out they were doing it in honor of Charlie and there was a lot of "Uncle Charlie" talk in the dugout while we were batting.

I'm just taking it in stride. Not sure if I'm the target of something or if this is some kind of criticism of management. I'm more surprised that the guys have taken up Charlie's fight instead of Cliff Lee's.

The nickname game has grown, too.
We've got "Spider-Man," "Count Chocula," "Honest Abe," and then me, your same ol' "Bead."
Spider-Man gets hung on any guy who climbs a wall to rob somebody of a home run. Count Chocula is a cereal one of the guys eats whenever he gets a chance. You would think with a guy named Coco Crisp that we would all have cereal names.

I wanna be Crunch Berries if that's the case.

Everybody else is like me. They get called by the initials of their name. Aaron Boone is "Abe." Makes sense.

I'm glad "Bead" stuck for me. I'll never forget the only time I almost punched my own teammate was when he looked at me and said "I don't know why they call you 'Beady' ... your eyes look pretty normal to me."

I told him it was my initials. B and D.

"Oh. I get it."

Yeah, whatever.

I got him back when the nickname "Scabby" stuck on him. He never knew it was me that named him that and he still doesn't know, to this day, why people call him that.

He sure did grow on people in an irritating kind of way.

See you soon,
BD