Suddenly Godzilla stompts into our yard, highlighting the global nature of today's baseball biz, and Hideki Matsui will hopefully hit a ton of ropes into the RF bleachers and make us forget about tears for Vlad, GA, The Kingfish, the Ryan Express, and all the other dear departed.  On a pure baseball footing, Hideki Matsui looks to be a superb signing for us.

Big Hideki not only adds countless fans to our "fan base" from the Land of the Rising Luminous Power,  but he is also a Damn Good Baseball Player.  Happy to have him ... and so should be Halos fans from everywhere. (btw ... Mr Matsui, please help get us the services of Mr Yu Darvish, from your native land.)

But we all come from somewhere called home ... This is what makes up the the Angels'  "fan base".

Where does this so-called fan base of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim actually exist?  OK, I am biased towards areas near the Stadium, and my own belief is that the Angels' fan base emanates from St. Joseph Hospital of Orange (circa 1964), but what do I know?  For all I know, the Angels' fan base may have actually started circa 1888 when Vladimir Guerrero was born on a whaling ship in the Caribbean Sea.

So where is YOUR Angels fan base?  Express your bad-ass self and represent YOUR hood in the poll below and  comment with the explosive speed of a moon shot off the bat of Mr Matsui ...

I had to wait for my heartbeat to slow down before I could even think about posting anything, but here we go with highland's fearless and completely unbiased biased player ratings for Game 5.

Bring it on, Spanks ... and we''ll see you all on Saturday .... ~ highland

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Our Halos are still struggling at the plate but managed to gut this one out. Abreu, Rivera, Kowbell and Desmond were all swinging limp sticks. Fortunately, we had enough to carry this to Game 4 ...

Sorry I'm so late with these player rankings but a) I broke my ankle b) lost my laptop and c) these last 2 games have taken nearly 10 hours to complete. That, said, here are my completely biased unbiased player rankings from Game 3 ... As usual please feel free to flame me and post your own player rating below. .... Ratings will be quicker after tonight's game against the Devil Rays :)

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Well, let's start off these player rankings with this non-sequitur: 46 degrees fahrenheit is not cold. That's 8 degrees celcius, which is warm in Inverness, Scotland, where I lived for two years. So all you wimpy millionaire players wearing your balaclavas ... Man up! It was only 3 hours, 18 minutes of baseball in a teeny-weeny bit of cold ... Now go hit the jacuzzis and the ho's.

Overall game rating 5: Not very good. Had it rained, it would have washed out CC's brilliant start. But no HRs fell in the launching pad that is Yankee Stadium (v 2.0). Spahn and Sain and pray for rain? I pray for no rain and Hokie Joe v. Burnett on Saturday.

That said, here are highland's completely unbiased biased player reviews for the series in which the Angels will eliminate the Yankees:

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Only three moments in my life match the way I feel right now 1) the birth of my son Ethan 2) my marriage to Elizabeth and 3) Game 7 of 2002.

Old highland is going to to give his unbiased biased player ratings on Game 3 at Fenway on Sunday. I want to finish this off so that I can get drunk, so it might be a quickie. Keep in mind that big-game heroics carry a lot of weight, these ratings are for this game only, not the series ... so feel free to disagree. BTW, I said I was not going to hand out any 10s in this series, but .... tonight changed my mind. ~ highland

Ratings below the jump ...

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Well here is old highland celebrating a 2-0 lead going to Fenway for Game 3 on Sunday. I'm back on the job to give my completely biased unbiased player reviews for Game 2 in the old-school sports journalism style.

Please have a crack at me if you want to, that's what this is all about, would love to see your comments/corrections. After all, these are only my player ratings and until Scottnak devises some evil genius method of doing post-game player reviews, I'm afraid you're stuck with this ancient form of journalistic review.

Let's finish this on Sunday! Ratings below the jump ...

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My player rankings for Game 1 of the ALDS. In the grand tradition of British soccer writing, I am going to assign a rating of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, based on the individual players' performance in the game.

Feel free to argue ... but these are my damn player ratings. Of course I am elated that we've got a 5-0 victory over the Red Sox but I tried to be very unbiased on these player rankings, journalist-style (non ESPN) ... Keep in mind these are my own ratings alone, and please feel free to disagree or agree with me, or give your adjustments or own ratings in the comments below. ~ highland

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OK, it's time for my one stat-head post of the season, and on the last day! ... Chone Figgins is currently sitting on a .298 batting average, and it's really splitting hairs, but let's face it -- a .300 average looks way better than a .299 average on the back of a baseball card.

So with my rudimentary mathematical skills (I can use a calculator), I have figured out what our Desmond needs to do today in the regular season finale to finish at .300 or over.

2-for-2 gets him over .300. So does almost any combination of three hits (3-for-3, 3-for-4, and 3-for-5 do it, and 3-for-6 just barely gets it done, leaving him him at .299837, which rounded up would technically make him a .300 hitter).

So let's say you're Mike Scioscia and Figgins gets hits in his first two at-bats. Do you pull him out of the game to preserve the .300 average? Or, what if Figgins goes 2-for-3 do you leave him in so that maybe he could go 3-for-4?

Do you pull a Napoleon Lajoie and have him try to bunt for a base-hit his first two at-bats ....? (In 1910, the St Louis Browns manager so hated Ty Cobb that he played his third baseman on the cut of the outfield grass, allowing Lajoie to bunt for six straight singles. He still lost the batting title to Cobb ...)

An interesting subplot to an otherwise inconsequential game before the nailbiting and ulcer medication kicks in ...

Now you may have noticed that MLB.com have an army of photographers with digital cams at each and every game. Hence, while flipping through our roster and our stats, I noticed that each player's page comes up with an "action" photo". Flipping through these is kinda like flipping through a mini baseball card collection. So I've corralled them all on photobucket to flip through at your leisure.

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