In his first start in the 1956 World Series, Don Larsen failed to pitch two innings. He faced just 10 batters and had 6 on base. By the end of the game, the Brooklyn Dodgers had scored 13 points against the Yankees.
Of course, in his next start, Larsen made a perfect game. The Daily News’ Joe Trimble began his article on the performance with the following: “An imperfect man threw a perfect match.”
Right-hander Domingo German, who joined Larsen, David Wells and David Cohn after becoming the fourth perfect game in Yankees history Wednesday, is also incomplete. The crumbling Oakland Coliseum, the dying home of the Athletics, which hosted his jewel, was anything but a baseball paradise. The 11-0 win ended just after midnight in New York.
But that’s the magic of perfect match. It can happen to any pitcher at any time. Wells and Cohn had a 20-win season and were selected to multiple All-Star teams. Larsen and German are not. Two A’s are perfect. One is a Hall of Famer. catfish hunterand another is current Oakland Broadcaster Dallas Braden, who had a losing record in his career.
The battered A’s, the worst team in baseball, already batting less than 500 in 40 games, are obsessed with the vision of building a new base in Las Vegas. But they’ve endured many bad seasons, and this was the first perfect game against a franchise since 1904, when Boston’s Cy Young did against the Philadelphia Athletics. Their manager, Connie Mack, then 42, spent more than half his life in the dugout and was never seen again.
When Larsen did it, the feat hadn’t been accomplished in 1922 by a nondescript Chicago White Sox rookie named Charlie Robertson. Germanic’s previous drought was not very long, but it was significant. No pitcher has been perfect since Seattle’s Felix Hernandez in August 2012.
In the intervening 10 regular seasons (2013-2022), there were 22,765 incomplete games. Yu Darvish, Yusumeiro Petit, and Max Scherzer each lost when the 27th hitter came on base. Yankees Carlos Rodon lost a try in the 9th inning with a slider injuring the top of a hitter’s shoe as part of the White Sox in 2021.
“Today really has to be our day,” Rodon said after last summer’s game. “You have to play, they have to catch all the balls, and you can’t hit anyone. There’s a luck factor. It’s like the lottery.”
Like Larsen, Gelman gave no warning before hitting the jackpot. Last Thursday, he was booed off the mound in the Bronx after conceding 10 points in three innings against Seattle. In his previous start in Boston, Gelman allowed seven runs in two innings.
He was suspended for part of May after a Toronto umpire found a sticky substance on his pitcher. He received a more serious suspension for domestic violence from mid-September 2019 until the then shortened 2020 season.
Since then, the Yankees have had no idea what to do with Gelman. He hinted at his retirement in 2020 in a cryptic social media post. His shoulder injury has sidelined parts of his last two seasons. He was the sixth player in the 5-a-side rotation before spring training, picking the new jersey number 0.
After that, the injuries piled up and the Yankees had no choice but to sign up due to Gelman’s instability every five games. He allowed Minnesota six runs in one start, and then shut out Cleveland in the ninth inning the next.
He took to the mound in Oakland Wednesday with a 5.10 ERA. He pitched the 24th perfect game in major league history to win the game.
The 30-year-old Gelman had never shutout in 13 professional seasons. He pitched only one complete game in the minors in 2017. But there, in front of a Pro Yankees crowd of 12,479, he flipped curve after curve on 51 of 99 pitches, with eight ground ball outs, nine strikeouts, and 10 outs. air.
As always in perfect games, there was also a highlight of defense. In the fifth, first baseman Anthony Rizzo grabbed Seth Brown’s down-the-line smash with his backhand and dove in, flipping from the knee and allowing Gelman to cover the bag. Nothing compares to an A-rated hit.
The biggest threat was a three-ball one-strike count to Jonah Bride in the eighth inning with two outs. But Gelman dropped a curveball for a cold strike, then a foul, and then another grounder to end the inning. That’s how it ended when Estrie Lewis hit a curveball on third baseman Josh Donaldson. Donaldson gave Lizzo a shot to prove his masterwork.
The Yankees’ four perfect games led the franchise, tying with the White Sox. There are seven teams that have never participated, including two with histories that go back to the 1800s: the Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals. The Toronto Blue Jays have nothing, but longtime ace Roy Halladay got one in his second month with the new Philadelphia Phillies in 2010.
German was the first player from the Dominican Republic to complete a perfect match, but Pedro Martínez in 1995 missed the feat. Martinez had a perfect game in the ninth inning against Montreal in San Diego, but allowed the first RBI in the 10th. Pirates’ Harvey Haddix, who played for Milwaukee in 1959, pitched perfect through the 12th inning, but erred (and played) in the 13th.
Let’s not dwell on poor Armando Galarraga. He missed a perfect game in 2010 — long before the replay — when first base umpire Jim Joyce missed a call that should have been the final out at first base.
Nights like Germanic nights are outliers to be cherished forever, reminding us that whoever we are, perfection may actually exist and be waiting to surprise us. It reminds me.
“We’re all imperfect and flawed in some way,” Halladay’s widow Brandi said in a speech at the 2019 Hall of Fame induction ceremony. But with hard work, humility and dedication, even imperfect people can have perfect moments. “
