Originally posted at The Tenth Inning Stretch

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FORT MYERS FL. A bit before the seventh inning stretch of today's game with the Boston Red Sox, Twins' manager Rod Gardenhire went to the visitor's clubhouse at the Jet Blue Park and decided to have an impromptu press conference. He announced that, since last Saturday when Drew Butera was optioned to Rochester, Gardenhire has been having severe symptoms of separation anxiety including indigestion, night terrors, flu-like symptoms and other unmentionable things. To that effect, he said, he had to "do right by Drewy". He indicated that he has to "get that cannon arm of his on the field" and he thinks that this Spring Training Drew has shown signs of major improvement at the plate. "He will hit better than Nicky ever did for us this season, write it down", Gardenhire said. He also said, that Drew Butera will now be his starting Right Fielder and will slide in occasionally at Left Field and Center Field. "He is fearless out there, I always liked him and he has deceiving speed". Gardenhire admitted that sending Butera down (or rather pretending to do so) was a ploy to expose the haters and the closed-minded and "them bloggers and commies". Here is an exclusive spy shot of Drew Butera at the Hammond Stadium outfield on a AAA game this afternoon:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6042/7036101445_c635065d25_o.jpg

This was a scary April Fools' Day joke but good. He "hit" .167 last year (he has a career BA of .178).

Here is what Butera said about his assignment to AAA:

"They told me they were going with two catchers," Butera said. "I'm just going to go down and work on some things, get some at-bats and get some playing time."

Here is what Terry Ryan had to say:

"We need more offense out of Butera," Ryan said. "He has to earn at-bats. You know Rivera's down there; he's no slouch. We make guys earn their keep, that's all. He's very gifted. He's got a powerful arm, he works well with pitchers, but we've got to get some offense. We had trouble scoring last year; we can't do that again. We need to score runs."