Domingo Germán throws only 24th perfect game in MLB history

Perfect games are more rare than lottery wins. More rare than lightning strikes. In fact, throughout the long history of the major leagues, there had only been 23 of them. Until Wednesday night.

The Yankees have been inexplicably struggling through June. While there were problems with Aaron Judge’s toe, Anthony Volpe’s defensive mistakes, Josh Donaldson’s yips at the plate, still you expect the Yankees with their gold-plated lineup to do better than .454 through the month.

What they needed was a spark, something to ignite them. What they got was perfection.

When Domingo Germán took the mound against the Mariners last Thursday, it was a different story. He gave up ten runs and was booed off the field by irate Yankees fans. In between then and now, he suffered a family tragedy, with a beloved uncle passing away.

“I cried a lot yesterday in the clubhouse. I had him with me throughout the whole game. I was thinking about him, and it happened. This game is a tribute to him. He would have been so happy. He was always someone who brought joy to our family and it happened for him to watch this from up there.”

So with little more than his mourning on his mind, Domingo went out to the loneliest spot on the planet, the mound at Yankee Stadium, and let his body take over. As his muscle memory and instinct threw pitch after pitch, the Oakland A’s hitters, currently in their own slump as a team, were retired.

As the Yankees defense stiffened behind what was slowly becoming a chef d’ouvre on the mound, providing exciting diving catches by Anthony Rizzo to save what would have been an easy double, or the normally-shaky glove of Volpe just hoovering up everything near him.

With the defense doing their part, the Yankee bats, inexplicably quiet of late, came to life. Not so much with home runs, but with clutch hits, beating out bunts, and hit-and-run plays executed to perfection. Small ball on the biggest of stages.

Even Germán, who is known for throwing heat, let the off-speed stuff do the heavy lifting. He struck out nine on the evening, all of them on curve balls or changeups.

This was the fourth perfect game thrown in Yankees franchise history, the first since David Cone’s domination of the Expos on July 18, 1999. The last time that the Athletics fell victim to a perfect game? A century and a quarter ago, when Cy Young hung one on them in May of 1904.

Germán has had a strained relationship with the Yankees, missing all of 2020 for a domestic violence suspension before boycotting the playoffs last season when he simply refused to report back unless they guaranteed that he would start. They wouldn’t do that, so he stayed away, for which he was very nearly released by the organization.

Battling for a spot in the rotation in 2023, Germán served a 10-day suspension for illegal sticky substance use on his hand, and his ERA has dipped to 4.55 this season. But like a bolt of lightning, perfect games can strike anyone, anywhere.

In entering the record books, Germán becomes not only the 24th ever perfect pitcher, but also the first Dominican-born player to throw a perfect game, the first Latino to throw a no-hitter for the Yankees, and the eleventh player to throw a perfect game on less than 100 pitches (Germán threw 99 pitches).

Here’s a complete list of perfect games in MLB history:

And now we can add to that list an entry that reads “Domingo Germán (New York Yankees): June 28, 2023 vs. Oakland Athletics”. Forever writ large across history.