OAKLAND, Calif. — The Athletics were doing their best Thursday to turn the page on a lamentable chapter in their history.
As if going 21-60 at the season’s halfway point wasn’t enough to digest, the A’s began the second half of the season Wednesday night as victims of the 24th perfect game in major league history as authored by New York Yankees journeyman right-hander Domingo German.
It was the third perfect game at the Coliseum, joining Jim “Catfish” Hunter (May 8, 1968) and A’s television analyst Dallas Braden (May 9, 2010).
While German was still basking in the glow of the fourth perfect game in Yankees history and an 11-0 win, the Athletics could do little but offer congratulations and reluctantly acknowledge their part in reverse perfection before an announced crowd of 12,479.
Second baseman Tony Kemp tried to make sense of things Thursday before the A’s faced the Yankees in the third game of the series.
“I feel like we’ve been trying to put a lot of things behind us,” Kemp said. “In baseball, you’ve got to keep battling and you’ve got to keep going. Everybody showed up here today to win a ballgame and win the series. You can’t do anything about it now but tip your cap.”
The A’s didn’t win the series, however, falling 10-3 to the Yankees. They opened the series with a 2-1 win over New York.
German needed just 99 pitches, 72 of them strikes, to retire all 27 batters he faced, striking out nine. German had just two three-ball counts, and the closest thing to a hit came on a ball hit down the first base line by right fielder Seth Brown in the fifth inning.
Brown scorched a ground ball at 106.5 miles per hour, with Anthony Rizzo making the stop on a dive and then throwing to German covering first.
“It was a curveball, I hit it well and he made a good play on it,” Brown said. “I was hoping it would sneak through and it just didn’t work out.”
Other than that, the Athletics were helpless with German throwing a dizzying array of curveballs and change-ups to go along with a fastball in the low 90s.
“It was as perfect of a perfect game as you could throw,” former A’s pitcher and NBC Sports California analyst Dave Stewart said on the air.
The 319th no-hitter in major league history was the first perfect game since Seattle’s Felix Hernandez against Tampa Bay on Aug. 15, 2012. The A’s had played 5,010 consecutive games since July of 1991 without being no-hit, with the last one coming against four Baltimore pitchers (Bob Milacki, Mike Flanagan, Mark Williamson and Gregg Olson) at the Coliseum.
Perfect games are as random as they are rare. German, 30, was 18-4 as recently as 2019 but has had a checkered career, having served an 81-game suspension for domestic abuse in 2020. This season, German received an ejection and a 10-game suspension for using a sticky substance during a game.
Out of nowhere, German put everything together against the A’s.
“I mean, we hit some balls at people, and sometimes that’s just baseball,” Kemp said. “You can’t help what destiny has for you. We were just on the wrong end of it and he pitched a good game.”
German evened his record at 5-5 and was coming off consecutive poor starts, with his previous outing ending after 3 1/3 innings having given up 10 hits, 10 runs (eight earned) in a 10-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners.
it was a different German Wednesday night.
“He was throwing everything,” third baseman Jonah Bride said. “It’s a different-looking curveball, with a different break. He as putting it right where he wanted and even if you were looking for it he was putting it right on the corner, then throwing the sinker back door. He had everything working.”
Through a translator, a euphoric German stated the obvious.
“To accomplish something like this in my career is something that I’m going to remember forever,” German said.
Coming as it did after a 2-1 win over the Yankees Tuesday night, Athletics manager Mark Kotsay was less than pleased with the way his team approached their at-bats against German.
“We didn’t make any adjustments to what he was doing, throwing his change-up and his breaking ball until he got two strikes,” Kotsay said. “We hit a ton of balls to the pull side. Didn’t make one adjustment to hit the ball to the opposite field. When you try and pull soft (pitches), you’re going to hit a lot of ground balls to the pull side and get weak contact.”
First baseman Ryan Noda, who actually worked the count to 3-1 on one of his three at-bats, agreed with his manager
“I just think we weren’t adjusting very well,” Noda said. “I think we missed a couple of pitches we could could have drove, and sometimes that’s the name of the game.”
While Yankees players avoided German in the dugout as a potential perfect game came into view, the tension also increased in the A’s dugout.
“Obviously you know where you’re at with it,” Brown said. “As the game progresses, you start to feel that pressure of, ‘All right, it’s happening. We need to get a hit here.’ It’s hard not to feel that tenseness as the game gets later and later.”
In the television booth, Braden straddled the line between inundating viewers with the tale of his own perfect game on Mother’s Day in 2010 and letting German’s drama play out.
According to statistician Dave Feldman, Braden is the first person to both throw a perfect game and then call one as an announcer.
“For a long time, as the game was unfolding, I’m trying to tell myself, ‘Don’t inject yourself here. This is not about you,’ ” Braden said. “I was trying to find a balance.”
The game stirred up memories for Braden, who pitched his perfect game on Mother’s Day in front of a grandmother who raised him and remains an iconic moment for the franchise.
“It’s life-changing that for a moment in time you are touched and kissed by the baseball gods,” Braden said. “I think what the A’s fans have done for me is they sort of polish you with this aura and it doesn’t ever feel like it fades.”
Braden said he was one of the last people to leave the stadium, and made his way to congratulate German for joining an exclusive club.
“It’s going to be a day that he will always be able to reflect on,” Braden said. “He’ll remember certain emotions. He will be told from here on out how that game changed other people’s lives and will be connected with people he may not have connected with otherwise.”
