One of my classmates in grad school dated him for a while (read: cleat chased and was getting banged). I got to hang out with him in the offseason last year about 3 weeks after he got traded from Boston to Oakland (and about 1 week after they signed Yeonis Cespedes that could've potentially taken away some of his payig time). He was damn near depressed he got traded... but I think things worked out just fine for him (Boston sucked and Oakland made the playoffs).
Anyways, we got pretty drunk that night and if you knew him a little, you'd understand why he's growing the beard. He's just a good ol' country boy from Savannah, GA (or somewhere in south GA). He's a borderline redneck (there's nothing wrong with this) and he really likes wrestling (no kidding, he bragged about having HHH's phone number - and he showed me it without me asking to see it). What I guess I'm trying to say is that he came off to me as white-trash. Yea... I'm an elitist like that.
I guess if you could compare him to someone, it would be the white-trash version of Johnathan Papelbon.
