Everybody makes mistakes— but it takes a special breed to beat up their girlfriend before and after a charity event.
Last Wednesday, June 28, Domingo Germán of the New York Yankees faced all 27 Oakland Athletics batters in 9-inning regulation and recorded an out on every try, resulting in the 24th perfect game in Major League Baseball history, the first since 2012 and the fourth in Yankee history. See our sports section for a breakdown of the performance, because you won’t get it here.
You won’t, of course, because four years ago, he struck his girlfriend at then-teammate CC Sabathia’s charity event. In attendance were several other teammates and their respective families. Germán belligerently returned home afterward, becoming physically violent with his partner to the point where she hid in a locked room. She called another Yankee player’s wife and confidant, and the couple subsequently sped over to intervene before Germán could do further damage in an unbreakable drunken stupor.
The incident was soon reported to MLB by a Yankees staff member, whom Germán’s girlfriend had told. In 2020, Germán was suspended 81 games for violating the league’s domestic violence policy as a result— the largest punishment the MLB has levied in a domestic abuse-related instance wherein no formal charges were issued.
Now, having outlined what we have, the following matters nil. But, for the sake of reminding the casual or die-hard fan of whom they have on their roster while their chase for the mightily elusive “28” is in the midst of its fourteenth year: Germán attacked his significant other not once, but twice in one night. In doing so, he took with him to the restriction list his 18 wins and league-leading .818 win-loss percentage away in late September 2019 during a postseason run where the Bombers would ultimately fall one game shy of reaching the World Series. He left his team hanging, and dropped the ball so spectacularly that we’re struggling to reconcile how he got it back in the first place.
What happened Wednesday night is not the type of comeback story Hollywood would be pressed to make a movie out of. It is not the triumphant tale of resilience and second chances on the heels of one’s uncle’s passing that the popular media is positively soaking up and spinning out en masse. Nor can it be retooled as a team effort above all, because, let’s be honest, that’s quite the reach considering throwing a perfect game might just be the pinnacle-most accomplishment an individual can achieve in a team sport.
The defense had to be iron-clad. The catcher had to be on-point. The broadcast had to be iconographically rerun-worthy. All of this definitely transpired, but Anthony Rizzo’s “web gem” won’t be sent to Cooperstown. And neither should Germán, because there is a difference between the main event being made possible by an “imperfect man,” and whatever Domingo Germán is. It may not be for us to say, although, by the tone of this editorial, it’s discernible where we lean. And maybe that’s the point.
Someone with an indiscretion conveniently omittable from baseball cards as to avoid having that conversation with your kids, and a rap sheet that does not run concurrent with the MLB’s desire to keep eyeballs on their game while steering away from its downfalls, has achieved a great athletic feat. Its significance is exponentially diluted by its deliverer, and even more so every time outlets, even those of alleged esteem like the New York Daily News, weigh in with broad-stroke comparisons coloring Germán the next imperfect Yankee to attain perfection.
Headline: “Germán Fits In Just Perfectly; Like Yankee legends before him, Domingo is no saint off the field” — excuse me? Ah-baking powder? This is apples and oranges, nay, apples and wrenches logic, if we’ve ever encountered, Wayne. Party off.
Let’s look to the language within, perhaps, for some journalistic requiem. Reading, reading, reading. Ah, yes: Dirty Don Larsen was a drinker, alright, at least according to bigger drinker Mickey Mantle, leading up to his perfect moment in 1956. Yogi Berra leapt into the Larsenist’s arms after Game 5 of the World Series at the old Yankee Stadium, the still-existing video footage of such offering what’s classifiable as good-ol’, weep-worthy evergreen entertainment—- for the wicked.
Deplorable David Wells sure danced with the devil ahead of his perfect game, as well— if by dancing with the devil, you mean throwing them back with a fresher-than-fresh-faced, pre-SNL Jimmy Fallon until the brink of dawn, providing for a stone-cold hungover southpaw nicknamed “Boomer” by his magical midafternoon matinee dated May 17, 1998. Oh, what an Ishtarian box-office disaster.
And vein-in-the-neck madman David Cone infamously raved with Wells that whole season before Wells was shipped out in exchange for Rocket Clemens. Cone became the lone remaining David in town, the 27-up, 27-down baton passed down onto him. He did not miss the boat when mystique and aura ported once more into the newer old Yankee Stadium on, of all days, Yogi Berra Day the following year— the perfect backdrop for the perfect game thrown by simply the worst man ever.
No, this trio didn’t have fireable demerits. They barely had baggage. They had a penchant for cultivating camaraderie under the influence. Sue them.
Meanwhile, the Yankees’ fourth perfect game thrower’s brainless hour predilections lie more in the realm of protruding above harmony, and replacing what was once pure with utter vileness.
Subdue him.
To paint the Yankee perfect game quartet as equally imperfect is something other outlets can feel within their right to do. But missing the ball to hit a deadline is an exercise in tomfoolery which The Messenger would never partake in, lest we covet declaring our desire to be designated for reassignment at once.
It’s a pretty open-shut case: everyone is imperfect, but not everyone hits their girlfriend.
We love the game. But we do not love Domingo Germán. And we do not love that he is still paid to play the game in this town, in any town, somehow.
“I will probably be the most controversial call today—- because of Germán’s past, I find no joy in what he did last night,” David in Florida said during Hour 2 of The Michael Kay Show’s Kay-less radio broadcast the following day. Co-hosts Don LaGreca and Peter Rosenberg addressed what they wanted to stay away from, with regard to the perfect game discussion, though it was simply unavoidable.
“I woke up, saw he was throwing a perfect game and said, ‘I don’t care, I’m going back to bed.’ I’ve seen perfect games before, and I’ll see them again. I don’t care about his,” David added.
“I can 100% understand David and other fans not wanting to celebrate him,” LaGreca responded. “Personally– it bothered me. I have zero tolerance for it [Germán’s domestic abuse offense]. You lay your hand on a woman, like that, I’m done with you. I’m done with you.”
“I have difficulty forgiving that… hitting another woman absolutely sickens me. And I can feel the way I want to feel about him,” LaGreca concluded. He agreed with caller-in David that others beside Germán like Yankee backstop on the night, Kyle Higashioka, and Yankee play-by-play announcer on the call, Fordham alum Ryan Ruocco, deserve accommodation for their efforts that night.
Germán did something incredible on the baseball field. He also did something morose outside the lines, thereby blurring those that shape the record of history in a sport that definitely could use some more asterisking… not.
It’s your right to “support the team,” it’s a free country. But this Fourth of July, let’s patriotically uphold moral codes, not redefine them as to reject individualism in favor of a surrender to mob mentality. The second we stop holding offenders accountable because a certain amount of time has passed, or because they throw curveballs with high spin rates — whatever that means — is the second our commentary on matters pertinent to the grand scheme of our precious and supposedly civilized lives lose all credence.
Nothing, and we mean nothing, goes beyond a person’s right to feel safe from harm. Nothing.
Don’t compare Germán to Larsen. Don’t compare Germán to Wells. Don’t compare Germán to Cone. Spare this trio your tired, your poorly drawn and more detrimental than it is didactic diction, for Germán is in another class entirely— one where lessons aren’t learned if the only punishment for skipping the class on human behavior and decency is three months off.
And don’t we just know full-well that oftentimes, the detained love to rewrite their tainted histories and tell you about their restraint— what they didn’t do and could have, rather than what they did do, and what most others wouldn’t dare to.
(800) 899-7233 is the National Domestic Abuse Hotline for those in need of urgent assistance.
