UPDATE: Germán did return for the 2021 season.
Last year at this time, Domingo Germán was the best pitcher in baseball.
Now, after MLB screwed him over based on no admissible evidence, and with no known injury, he's retiring.
He turns 28 next month.
I had hoped that, by delaying this post for a few hours, I would get an answer to the question. The question is, "Why?"
But I didn't get an answer.
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Domingo Germán Polanco was born on August 4, 1992 in San Pedro de Macorís, a town in the Dominican Republic once known for producing fine-fielding, if not always good-hitting, shortstops. He was signed by the team then known as the Florida Marlins in 2009, and was traded to the Yankees in 2014. He missed the 2015 season due to Tommy John surgery.
He reached the majors in 2017, and made his 1st major league start in 2018. In 2019, he was 18-4 through September 19. He was the best pitcher in baseball, and a big reason why the Yankees were among the favorites to win the World Series.
Screw you, you dumb Met fans: Last season, Domingo Germán was better than Masahiro Tanaka, never mind Jacob deGrom.
But on September 19, Major League Baseball put him on the administrative leave list, pending an investigation of suspected domestic violence. On September 25, he was officially suspended for the rest of the season, including the postseason.
The Yankees still won the American League Eastern Division, and the AL Division Series, despite having a hole in their rotation. In the AL Championship Series, the Yankees went into Game 6 needing to win that and Game 7, both in Houston, against the Houston Astros to win the Pennant.
The Yankees didn't have a starting pitcher available for Game 6, due to rest issues, injuries, and Germán's suspension. So Chad Green started, the Astros scored 3 runs in the 1st inning, and won the game on José Altuve's home run off Aroldis Chapman in the bottom of the 9th.
On January 2, 2020, for "violating the league's personal conduct policy," Germán was suspended for the 1st 63 games of the 2020 season, for a total of 81 games, exactly half of a normal regular season.
He was never charged with a crime. There was not enough evidence to indict him. There was not even a police report.
According to legendary New York baseball writer Bob Klapisch, the entire suspension was based on the word of one man, who said he witnessed Germán slapping his wife during an argument in a public setting.
If the setting was public, then, surely, others saw it. No others have come forward to back this story up. Even now, the one witness has been identified only as "an official from the Commissioner's office." Who just happened to be dining at the same restaurant as Germán and his wife. And if you believe that, I'd like to sell you the Macombs Dam Bridge.
Rickie Ricardo -- not to be confused with Ricky Ricardo, the bandleader played by Desi Arnaz on I Love Lucy -- is part of the Yankees' Spanish broadcast team. He knows Germán fairly well. Right after the announcement of the suspension, he said, "This is the absolute last guy on the team that I'd pick for something like this to happen."
If this is all the District Attorney's office had to go on, any charges filed would have gotten laughed out of court.
But this is the Yankees, and the office of Major League Baseball never misses a chance to screw the Yankees over.
Now, with the COVID-19 epidemic delaying the season, the regular season will only be 60 games -- meaning that Germán will have to sit out the entire regular season, plus the 1st 3 games of the postseason (should the Yankees make it; if they don't, then also the 1st 3 games of the 2021 regular season).
Reminder: He has never been charged with a crime. He has had an entire season, plus one postseason and possibly two, stolen from him, based on the word of one man, who isn't man enough to come forward and identify himself, and tell the public what he saw. A coward.
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On November 19, 1966, following a season in which he went 27-9, including 11 shutouts, led the National League in strikeouts again, and helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win their 4th Pennant in the last 6 years, Sandy Koufax retired. He was the best pitcher in baseball, and he wasn't quite 31 years old.
At his press conference, a reporter said, "The question is, 'Why?' Sandy." Koufax' response:
The question is, "Why?" I don't know if cortisone is good for you or not. But to take a shot every other ballgame is more than I wanted to do, and to walk around with a constant upset stomach, because of the pills, and to be high half the time during the ballgame, because you're taking painkillers. But that's, uh, I don't want to have to do that...
I don't regret one minute of the last twelve years, but I think I would regret one year that was too many.
What Koufax had told very few people was that he had already decided, after the 1965 season, to pitch in 1966, and that would be it.
Earlier that calendar year, Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns, the best running back in professional football, already the NFL's all-time leading rusher, and eventually selected in 1999 by The Sporting News as the greatest player in NFL history, was trying his hand as an actor, filming the World War II movie The Dirty Dozen in London. Team owner Art Modell told him to leave and come back to Ohio for preseason training camp.
Brown refused, telling Modell, already a noted cheapskate, that he could make more money and sustain fewer injuries as an actor than as a football player. Brown retired from football, taking away the one power Modell had over him, which was to have an undue affect on his football career, but giving up that football career. He was 30.
Koufax retired at 31 because of injury. Brown retired at 30 because he was his own man and didn't like being told what to do and how to do it -- unless it was by a film director.
Germán is retiring at 28. The question is, "Why?"
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When Muhammad Ali was stripped of the Heavyweight Championship of the World, it was because he had knowingly committed a crime. The question was whether the law had been fairly applied to him, and the Supreme Court of the United States decided that it had not, and threw the conviction out in a unanimous vote -- 4 years after the offense in question.
Andrew Luck was already a 4-time Pro Bowl quarterback, and had gotten the Indianapolis Colts to an AFC Championship Game, and would have surprised few people had he eventually gone on to lead them to win a Super Bowl, when he retired at age 29, due to concerns over the concussions that he had already sustained, and to those he could have continued to sustain.
Sandy Koufax lost all of his chance to professionally pitch from the age of 31 onward, because he was concerned about his health. But what if his arm problem could have been alleviated? We'll never know what he could have done in the last 1/3rd of his career.
Muhammad Ali lost all of his chance to professionally box at the ages of 26 and 27, and much of his ages of 25 and 28, because he stood up for a principle. He was being railroaded, and he challenged this, and he won -- but we'll never know what he could have done in the missing years.
Jim Brown lost all of his chance to professionally play football from the age of 30 onward, because he thought he was being treated unfairly. He was being railroaded, although far less seriously than was Ali, and he stood up for a principle. And he did prove himself to be a good actor, in terms of both ability and box-office draw. But we'll never know what he could have done in the 2nd half of his career.
Jim Brown, Sandy Koufax and Andrew Luck each made a choice. Muhammad Ali made a starker choice, much less his own choice than those other men's were.
Let me be clear about this: If Germán is actually guilty, then he deserves to be banned from baseball. But no one has proven him guilty. He had been railroaded. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could have accepted that he was innocent until proven guilty. He chose not to.
Manfred made a choice. Germán, like Ali, may have been forced into a choice.
The question is, "Why?"
And the man who must answer it is not Germán. It is Manfred.
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