The baseball game appeared destined for mediocrity. The New York Yankees have been lackluster this season, particularly since their star player got injured, while the Oakland Athletics are currently the worst team in baseball. The A’s owner, seemingly resigned to relocating the team to Las Vegas, has essentially given up on putting together an entertaining product on the field. It’s like a real-life portrayal of the antagonist in “Major League.” The stakes for this Wednesday night game in June were embarrassingly low.
However, as a Yankees fan residing on the opposite coast, I relish the opportunity to see them play in person whenever I can. Upon arriving at the Oakland Coliseum, a drab and unexciting baseball stadium, I checked my phone for the starting lineups. When you attend a baseball game, you hope to witness one of your team’s top pitchers take the mound. Unfortunately, the Yankees’ starter for the night was Domingo Germán, a relatively unremarkable 30-year-old who was even booed by his own fans in his previous outing. He lacked the star power that draws fans in. Nevertheless, I decided to enjoy a few beers, munch on some popcorn, and settle in to watch some inconsequential baseball.
There is a certain religious aspect to attending a baseball game, regardless of how uneventful it may be. It’s akin to finding your seat in a church or synagogue. You become part of a crowd engaging in rituals that date back over a century. The fundamental rules of the game have barely changed since the 1890s. It’s not quite nostalgia, which suggests a longing for something lost. Instead, it’s a sensation of stepping outside of time altogether.
If a typical baseball game has a vaguely religious aura, a perfect game—when a pitcher completes the entire contest without allowing a single opposing player to reach base—takes on an air of the miraculous. Prior to Wednesday, there had only been 23 perfect games in the entire 154-year history of professional baseball. Germán was an unlikely candidate to pitch the 24th. He has never been selected for an All-Star Team, and his salary is only a fraction of that of his teammate Gerrit Cole, the Yankees’ ace pitcher. At best, Germán is a flawed hero. In the past, he served an 81-game suspension for domestic violence, and earlier this season, he faced a 10-game suspension for using a foreign substance on the ball to enhance his grip. However, no one is ever truly deemed a likely candidate to pitch a perfect game. While most perfect games are thrown by great pitchers, the majority of great pitchers never achieve this feat. Since 1880, more individuals have been elected as the president of the United States than have pitched a perfect game. Before Wednesday night, the last perfect game occurred in 2012.
For the first few innings, nobody seemed to notice Germán’s domination over the A’s batters. It felt ordinary since the A’s are simply a terrible team. However, after the fourth inning, I turned to the friend sitting beside me and said, “Have you realized that Oakland hasn’t had a single baserunner yet?” Even then, we didn’t attach much importance to it. A perfect game for Domingo Germán? In a half-empty Oakland stadium, during a seemingly insignificant midsummer game between two subpar teams? After each inning, almost jokingly, I would nudge my friend and say, “He’s perfect through five! He’s perfect through six!” I was savvy enough to know that Germán wouldn’t achieve perfection. Nonetheless, it was amusing to entertain the idea that he might.
If you’re not a baseball follower, you may not understand why perfect games are so rare. Even the most exceptional hitters fail to reach base more often than not, giving the pitcher the advantage in each individual at-bat. However, to complete a perfect game, the pitcher must retire all 27 batters in order. That means getting three outs per inning for a total of nine innings. The A’s batters have an average on-base percentage of .300, which means they make an out 70% of the time. The probability of an event with a 70% chance occurring 27 consecutive times is roughly one in 15,000. This is close to the historical rate of perfect games, which is approximately one in 10,000 games, as reported by the Baseball Reference website. Even against the worst team in baseball, those odds are unbelievably slim.
The human eye sees what the numbers prove. Once a batter makes contact with the ball, the outcome is largely random. A well-hit ball might go directly into a fielder’s glove for an out, while a poorly-hit ball could find its way into a vacant patch of grass for a hit. Every time an Oakland hitter made contact, the New York fans in the crowd anticipated the ball dropping or slipping past the infielders. Yet, each time, the ball landed in the glove of a Yankees fielder, who effortlessly made the play. By the eighth inning, we were cheering loudly for every out Oakland made. By the ninth inning, we were on our feet. When the rookie Yankee shortstop, Anthony Volpe, fielded the final batter’s ground ball, we erupted with joy. Even the disappointed Oakland fans, aware that they had witnessed something extraordinary, appeared more astonished than upset.
Baseball offers irresistible material for metaphors and moral lessons. If someone like Germán can achieve immortality through one night of perfection, what does that say about the rest of us? Do we possess the potential for just a single moment of transcendence, no matter how much we struggle? It’s a pleasant thought, but in all likelihood, probably not. Germán may not be a superstar, but as a professional baseball player, he is already one of the best and most successful athletes in the world. In fact, he threw six hitless innings in his very first Major League start. He is not an ordinary person by any means.
Perhaps, then, we should view Germán’s perfect game as a testament to the role of luck and privilege in any individual accomplishment, regardless of how impressive it may be. In the most pivotal play of the night, the Yankees’ star first baseman, Anthony Rizzo, made a remarkable grab to prevent a hard-hit ball from reaching the outfield. Rizzo has won four Gold Glove awards, which recognize the best defensive player at each position, and earns an annual salary of $17 million. Would his counterpart on the A’s, who receives the league’s minimum salary of $720,000, have made that play? Perhaps not. The Oakland fielders made several mistakes that evening. If Germán had been pitching for the A’s, their poor fielding would have ruined his perfect game early on.
While all of this is true, I prefer to offer a third interpretation. You are unlikely to achieve any miracles yourself. However, if luck is on your side, you just might be fortunate enough to witness one.
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