Poor A’s Fans Can’t Even Get Properly Perfecto’d

If there could have been a story to rival England’s Jordan Henderson getting yellow carded and then breaking his arm without actually playing, it would have been Brian Serven homering in the ninth inning of Marlins-Athletics to complete the comeback di tutti comebacks, and that’s even allowing for the fact that England-Mexico at the Azteca was arguably a more momentous event than Marlins-Athletics no matter where it was played.

That it was played in West Sacramento just added to the mutant beauty of a day in which the Marlins…

… got seven innings of perfect pitching from Eury Pérez and provided him with a seemingly insurmountable 8-0 lead.

… took him out at the start of the eighth because the analytics kids back in Florida said ahead of time that’s what needed to be done.

… replaced him with the gloriously Gen-Z-named Lake Bachar, who immediately went walk-single-double-walk-grand slam-walk to not only obliterate the perfect game but put the win in danger, as the 8-0 lead was more than halved to 8-5.

… scored in the ninth for a run that they didn’t need until iconoclast/closer Pete Fairbanks went single-double-passed ball-single to make it 9-8, leaving Serven, playing his first game in two seasons and attempting his third multi-hit game in three, to make magic when there had been no signs of a magician. Sadly for all, he grounded out routinely to second to end a game that had such promise and ended up only an internet meme listing all the coaches in South Florida history who would’ve left Pérez in the game to achieve the rarity we all hoped to see, from Don Shula to Jimmy Johnson to Jim Leyland to Erik Spoelstra to Paul Maurice to Mario Cristobal.

And best of all, A’s fans at the ballpark, those rarest of all known mammals, spent the last two innings chanting “SHAME!” at Marlins manager Clayton McCullough, who absolutely didn’t choose take Pérez out after those seven innings but took the hit for the committee that had declared before the game that Pérez would get “90 pitches plus a batter,” a severely arbitrary choice that could have been stretched for two or three or six, or that least analytic of metrics, “until you give up a baserunner.” A’s fans have been flogged with tire chains and without mercy for years at the whims of ethically bankrupt and ludicrously lardbrained corporate management, but have been left to root for their team to have a perfect game thrown at them, and they still didn’t get what they want.

By now, the argument about pitcher care has long been ceded to the polo shirts upstairs, but as we have learned with suspensions in soccer, there are no rules that can’t be rendered mere suggestions with the right phone call from the right benefactor. Pérez could have started the eighth, or at least could have been offered the choice to see how long he could pull this off. If he walked Lawrence Butler as our boy Lake did, McCullough could have gone and gotten him immediately without a single accusatory finger aimed his way.

But Pérez was only making his third start since coming off the injured list with a leg strain, and in either event had never thrown more than 102 pitches in a game. Plus, there is recent precedent for perfectus interruptus, as Pérez became the third pitcher since at least 1900 to be pulled from a perfect game of seven innings or more (Rich Hill in 2016 and Clayton Kershaw in 2022), and then there’s this list which proves that no-hitter attempts are apparently regarded as just showoff stuff for workaholic assholes. It’s all part of the load management generation, and you can take that up with your boss when you get asked to close up the convenience store on Saturday night.

All we know this morning, though, is long-persecuted fans chanting “SHAME!” Not quite as lyrical as, say, “J’ACCUSE!” or the more contemporary “FUCK YOU!” but elegant in its way, as though this were a Brontë novel instead of a day in 80-degree heat six beers in. In a world in which we will accept any stupidity or disgrace as long as it helps our team, A’s fans are now better than the rest of us because they rooted against their own self-interest for brand new self-interest. They rooted for history even if history was a steel-capped boot aimed right for their hinders. They rooted a Marlin when the attendance figures show that even Marlins fans resist rooting for the Marlins. Alternatively, they deserved the A’s to win 10-9 as the zenith of analytical failure.

Instead, they got Lake Bachar and Brian Serven. Until we find out that they murdered entire civilizations in previous lives, we’re going to suggest that they deserved something better just this one time, even if it worked to their detriment the way being an A’s fan has consistently worked to their detriment.