On June 28, 2023, the New York Yankees beat the floundering Oakland Athletics by the decisive margin of 11-0. I had every reason to celebrate.
Oh, and the Yankees did not allow a baserunner. Three up, three down, every inning. That is to say, they pitched a perfect game — there have only been 24 perfect games in the history of Major League Baseball (MLB), a sport that has existed for well over one hundred years. Even more reason to celebrate.
And celebrate I did. But because the Yankees’ pitcher was Domingo Germán — who had previously been suspended from MLB for 81 games because he violated the league’s domestic violence policy — I couldn’t truly celebrate, not the way I would have celebrated if anyone else had pitched that day.
I had never rooted for Germán before. I would always say I hoped he gave up 13 runs and the Yankees scored 14. I wanted his statline to suffer and the Yankees to prevail regardless. But as I began to realize around the fifth inning that Germán was doing the unspeakable, I couldn’t help it. I was officially rooting for not just the Yankees, but him, too.
I didn’t move for four innings. I wanted ice cream; too bad. My leg fell asleep; too bad. I was rooting for Germán so hard that I refused to do anything to jeopardize his chances of pitching a perfect game, and — obviously — if I moved an inch he would give up a hit immediately. Like I’ve said, I’m superstitious.
In the eighth inning, I called my parents, who were asleep. I informed them that they had to come downstairs and watch the end of the game with me. I couldn’t explain why — you can’t just talk about a perfect game — but I hoped the sense of urgency in the voice would convey the message. It didn’t. Finally, in the ninth inning, I had to risk it. I ran up the stairs, grabbed my parents and told them they didn’t have a choice in the matter. They got the point.
So when did the switch flip? How did I go from wanting Germán to give up 14 runs to praying he allowed no baserunners?
Writer Claire Dederer might have the answer. “Genius gets a hall pass,” she penned in her 2023 memoir-esque book “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.”
I read “Monsters” for a writing class last year. Opening the inside cover, I was attacked by the framing question: “What do we do with the art of monstrous men?”
I expected a lecture — ugh — and a list of music I was no longer allowed to listen to, art I could no longer enjoy and books I could no longer devour. I added baseball to the conversation myself, in part because baseball is art and in part because I add baseball to every conversation.
Then I read the book.
It was part memoir, part instruction manual: memoir in that Dederer chronicled her own wrestling bouts with excellent art by reprehensible people and instruction manual in that she provided her resulting takeaways.
But her takeaways weren’t prescriptive at all. Instead, Dederer concluded that there is no single correct answer to the question she posed.
Because while we are sometimes happy to avoid art poisoned by a morally corrupt artist, there is a tipping point. Sometimes, the art is so beautiful that we no longer want to look away. We label the artist a “genius” and promptly excuse their transgressions.
My tipping point came in the fourth inning of Germán’s perfect game.
To Dederer, that is perfectly acceptable: we can appreciate the art of monstrous men, and we can even hope that they make more. But we have a simultaneous obligation to keep their misdeeds in the back of our minds — to contextualize the masterpiece and say: “that was awesome, but.”
That was awesome, but I wish Gerrit Cole or Nestor Cortés Jr. had pitched it instead. That was awesome, but I wish the credit would go to the catcher, Kyle Higashioka, instead of to Germán. That was awesome, but we should put an asterisk next to his name in the history books.
But we are allowed to push the monsters under our bed. We can hate Domingo Germán and celebrate a perfect game at the same time.
We can give a genius a hall pass — as long as we admit we’re doing it.