Hideki Matsui

Hideki Matsui has absolutely crushed the ball all season long for the Yankees, and he has continued to do that in the postseason.

So far, he has produced a line of .278/.422/.472 with two home runs and six runs batted in. He also put together a regular season that exceeded all expectations.

Sometime around the sixth inning, I think it was the exact moment Ryan Howard asked home-plate umpire Jeff Nelson if he could hit off a tee, I realized who the guy pitching for the Yankees reminded me of.

The wirey build, the ink, the lizard-like features, that insane curve ball. This guy was just like A.J. Burnett, the Toronto Blue Jays star.

He burst onto the Major League Baseball scene in 2003, crushing a grand slam home run in his first home game with the New York Yankees.

So far this season, Hideki Matsui has eight homers, 22 RBI, and is batting .256. But he is certainly not the durable player he once was, and the Yankees should consider trading him.

Thanks to Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, the World Baseball Classic, Orestes Destrade et al., baseball in Japan is less of a mystery than it used to be. But here is a list of 10 things the average MLB fan probably doesn't know.

[If you want my credentials, I moved to Japan with my parents when I was seven years old, and lived there for 10 years as a child, attending around 200 baseball games in Japan. If you don't want my credentials, the facts are still the same.]

The relentless and inescapable injury plague has been contracted by yet another pair of Yankees contributors.

It has begun to spread like a thick river of hot magma, waiting to devour and destroy anything still remaining in its path.

The New York Yankees beat the Oakland Athletics 9-7 in 14 innings because of a walk off home run by Melky Cabrera. CC Sabathia started and did not pitch well. He gave up seven runs on six hits in 6.2 innings of work for the no decision.

The people who say Derek Jeter is overrated must not watch Yankee games.

For the second day in a row, the Captain played an integral role in New York's win over the defending American League champion Tampa Bay Rays.

On Tuesday, the shortstop's opposite field single in the eighth got the go-ahead run to third with less than two outs.  His three-run homer in the ninth put the game out of reach.

By the time the Kansas City Royals got on the scoreboard it was too late to make a comeback. CC Sabathia had given the Yankees seven-and-two-thirds innings of shutout baseball and Jose Veras held the shutout until Tony Pena Jr. grounded in the Royals' first and only run of the night.

Once again, the Yankees jumped on the Royals' pitching. Johnny Damon singled, Nick Swisher walked, and Jorge Posada doubled in two first-inning runs for the second straight game. In the third, the Yanks' catcher doubled in another run after Swisher tripled in captain Derek Jeter.