Johnny Damon

The 2009 New York Yankees are a scary team to face. Just ask any team that was included in their 103 wins. Now imagine the New York Yankees as horror movie villains. It is a scary thought but this presentation will give you a better idea who best resembles who.

Plus there is a surprise at the end!

Trick or Treat?

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The strategy when facing Pedro Martinez is always to just wait him out, get his pitch count up, then pounce on the relievers who take over for him in the seventh inning.

In the fourth, everything appeared to be going as planned, as Mark Teixeira's homer tied the game and the Yankees started getting better swings against the future Hall of Famer.

The year was 1995.  I was 12-years old.  And I fell in love for the first time.

Hard. 

And anybody who was living in Seattle in the time can tell you who I fell for, because 1995 is perhaps the fondest year remembered in the modern Seattle era. 

Heavy rain was expected in the forecast for Saturday night. Most didn't even think Game Two would be played and expected it to be moved to Sunday at 4 p.m.

But Joe Girardi and Mike Scioscia opted to have Game Two be played on the scheduled night and it was a good thing, because baseball all around the world got a classic of a playoff game.

The Yankees had A.J. Burnett on the mound, making only his second career playoff start, while the Angels countered with Joe Saunders, who hadn't pitched in two weeks and was making his first start of the 2009 playoffs.

It was a cold and damp Friday night.

There was rain in the forecast and it felt like a December football game in the winter rather than an October baseball game in the fall.

But that wasn't going to stop the Yankees and the Angels from playing in front of almost 50,000 fans at Yankee Stadium for Game One of the American League Championship Series.

The Yankees were sending up their ace in CC Sabathia, who was 0-2 in the regular season against Los Angeles while the Angels were sending up their ace in John Lackey, who has had past success against the Yankees.

The first road game for the Yankees in the 2009 Playoffs was taking on the red-hot Minnesota Twins.

After three games of dominating pitching and late-inning clutch hitting, the Yankees disposed of Minnesota in a series sweep and moved on in the playoffs.

Starting on Friday, the Yankees will take on the Los Angeles Angels in the American League Championship Series.

The Angels are no strangers to the Yankees in the playoffs, and quite frankly, have been a pain in the Yankees' rear-ends in recent time.

Among the 134 pitchers Derek Jeter has faced at least 20 times in his Hall of Fame career, he has the lowest batting average against Scott Kazmir (.111) and Jered Weaver (.118).

That's not a good sign.

What is a good sign is the way the Yankees beat the Angels the last two times they played them on Sept. 22 and 23 in Anaheim—previously a graveyard for New York victories.

The Halos ousted the Bombers from the playoffs in 2002 and 2005, but this year, the two teams split the 10 games they played and were first and second in the Majors in runs scored.

Carl Pavano robbed the Yankees of $38 million from 2005-2008 and on Sunday night, New York will look to make him pay for it.

The 33-year-old right-hander is the only thing standing between the Bombers and their first trip to the American League Championship Series since 2004, and there's more on the line in Game 3 than just the satisfaction of sweeping the Twins and exacting revenge on Pavano.

There aren't too many players, who put up some of the best of numbers of their career at 35 years old.

But Johnny Damon is doing just that.

The New York Yankees have reached the halfway point of the season at 48-33, four games better than last season at this time (44-37), and have won 10 of their last 11 games entering their Monday afternoon tilt against the Toronto Blue Jays.

With the team at the exact midpoint of the season, now is a great time to assess how the players are performing this year.