The Oakland A's entered the MLB history books on Wednesday after taking part in the 24th perfect game ever pitched. Only, they were on the wrong side of the affair.
New York Yankees starter Domingo German threw 99 pitches, 75 of them called for strikes, on his way to pitching a gem against one of the worst teams (the A's are 21-61 through 82 games) in the history of baseball that will be remembered forever.
The A's, mind you, are not new to making this type of news. In the history of the franchise, since he was originally incepted as the Philadelphia Athletics, no team has been involved in more perfect games than the A's
In fact, the first-ever perfect game was pitched by a certain Cy Young when the Boston Americans defeated the Philadelphia A's 3-0 all the way back in 1904 in front of a crowd of 10,267 attentive pairs of eyes sitting inside Huntington Avenue Grounds in Massachusets.
As many as 64 years had to pass for the first time the A's got involved in one of these very unique things. This time, though, it was Catfish Hunter pitching the gem for the A's in a 4-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins inside the Coliseum.
The third perfect game in A's history would also be pitched by a home-towner inside the Coli: Dallas Braden tossed a perfect outing against the Tampa Bay Rays in 2010, the 17th-ever PG in the history of the MLB in another 4-0 victory for the residents.
This Wednesday, though, the Athletics went all the way down (dark) memory lane and allowed Domingo German to cruise past them all swiftly while not even taxing him with even reaching 100 pitches through the full 27-batter lineup.
The last perfect game before German's took place back in 2012, more than 10 years ago, in a season that saw as many as three different pitchers throw such gems, the last one belonging to Felix "King" Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners.
German's perfect game is the fourth such victory in Yankees' history, making New York the team with the most perfect games to their name overtaking the White Sox for the most in both the American and the National League.
At least the A's can, for now, say that they both opened (Cy Young) and closed (Domingo German) the book of MLB Perfect Games even though they ended up on the losing end both times... albeit with two perfect wins sandwiched between those two losses.