Hours after Domingo Germán made history Wednesday night, throwing just the 24th perfect game of all-time, the Yankees right-hander wasn’t the only one whose cell phone was blowing up with texts and calls wishing him congratulations. YES Network play-by-player Ryan Ruocco was hearing it from everyone. There was a kind message from Michael Kay, for whom Ruocco was pinch-hitting. There was a celebratory text from James Pitaro, the chairman of ESPN. Even Yankees superstar Aaron Judge hit Ruocco with a flattering text.
Germán’s mastery on the mound in an 11-0 win over the A’s etched his name in the record books, and replays of the final out of the game and the Yankees’ on-field celebration will be played on TV for decades to come. And Ruocco’s voice will be the soundtrack to it all.
“To know that my voice is forever now a part of Yankees history,” Ruocco said in a phone interview early Thursday morning, “and to feel good about the way it went? That’s as cool as it gets for me.”
The Athletic asked Ruocco to break down the final at-bat leading up to his historic call, piece by piece. In the ninth inning with two outs, Germán faced Esteury Ruiz. With a first-pitch curveball, Germán got Ruiz to ground out to third baseman Josh Donaldson, setting off a wild celebration in which the Yankees mobbed Germán on the field.
“Domingo Germán, one out away from forever.”
Ruocco didn’t plan any of what he said in the ninth inning, opting instead to roll with the moments as they happened. But he was avoiding one thing. Out of concern he might jinx Germán, he made sure all night not to use the word “perfect.”
“That’s why I said forever,” Ruocco said.
“Esteury Ruiz stands in his way.”
When Ruocco prepares for a game, he makes sure he knows how to correctly pronounce the names of everyone he might mention. And while he’d covered a handful of Yankees games against the A’s, Ruiz’s first name, Esteury, still didn’t quite roll right off the tongue for Ruocco. Yet, Ruocco knew he needed to say the full names of every batter Germán faced. “I need to identify the hitter, I think, for historical context,” he said. He brought up how he still remembers the way the Red Sox’s Carl Everett broke up Yankees righty Mike Mussina’s perfect game bid when Mussina was just one strike away in 2001. “(Ruiz) could be the guy who ends it,” Ruocco said. He had to say his name.
“Grounded to third. Donaldson has it. There it is! Perfection for Domingo Germán!”
Ruocco said he was “very much just reacting to the moment, trying to be well-paced and have a rhythmic cadence.” He said he wanted to “punctuate the moment” but also make sure he said the word “perfect” somehow near Germán’s name.
*Silence from the YES Network booth as the Yankees celebrate.*
At this point, Ruocco said, he wanted to “let the scene kind of speak for itself, and let the crowd speak for the moment.” It would be 20 seconds before Ruocco would say another word.
“Domingo Germán has thrown the 24th perfect game in baseball history, the fourth perfect game in Yankees history, and you will always remember where you were June 28th of 2023.”
Ruocco said this was where it was vital for him to hammer home the historical context. “I thought about how June 28 doesn’t necessarily mean something to everybody,” he said. “But now it does forever.” Then Ruocco rattled off another pair of dates. Ruocco grew up a diehard Yankees fan, and he said he knew exactly where he was for the club’s two previous perfect games. On July 18, 1999, when David Cone had thrown his perfecto, Ruocco said he was driving back from the Jersey Shore with his father, listening to the call on the radio. On May 17, 1998, he was again listening to the radio in the car with his dad, missing the beginning of soccer practice. He felt like Germán’s perfect game would be another one of those moments. “For Yankees fans and sports fans at large who are experiencing that live last night, they’ll always remember where they were on June 28 of 2023,” Ruocco said.
Superstitions, tense moments in the booth
The possibility that Germán might throw a perfect game started to settle inside the YES Network booth after the fifth inning. That’s when some of the superstitions started to kick in for Ruocco and ex-Yankees reliever-turned-color commentator Jeff Nelson.
Nelson made sure everything around him stayed in the same place — his iPad, his scorebook and even his hot cup of tea, which he refused to touch and sat cold by game’s end. Ruocco said he stood up in the eighth inning but immediately sat back down because that’s what he’d been doing all game and didn’t want the karmic forces to interfere with Germán’s night. Ruocco even saw that his cell phone battery was dying but refused to charge it out of superstition.
Nelson had been in the Yankees’ bullpen when Cone and Wells threw each of their perfect games.
“Just like in the bullpen,” Nelson said, “I just can’t mess with the mojo out there. I don’t want to do anything different, because if I do anything different, I’ll think that I messed it up.”
It was a chilly night in Oakland, and clubhouse reporter Meredith Marakovits put on a hoodie mid-game to keep warm. But she took it off to prepare for on-camera interviews on the field after the game. When she took it off, Nelson looked at her like she might have just messed with the mojo.
“I was like, ‘Oh, God. This is it,’” Marakovits said. “This is going to jinx it.”
For Nelson, simply having the chance to call the perfect game alongside Ruocco made him shake his head. He had also been WFAN radio John Sterling’s partner on the call when Judge hit his American League record-breaking 62nd home run last season in Texas.
For Marakovits, the night was “a little surreal.” To be in position for postgame interviews, she had to leave the booth after the eighth inning. Alongside WFAN’s Suzyn Waldman, Marakovits could feel the tension standing near the field as fans — many of them in Yankees gear — were hanging on every pitch in the bottom of the ninth.
Marakovits was the first to interview Germán after his accomplishment. She said she just wanted to do the moment justice while also asking Germán what she thought fans might have wanted to hear from him. At one point, Germán mentioned that one of his beloved uncles had died just two days prior. Marakovits made sure she asked a follow-up question.
“I could just see as he was talking how much his uncle meant to him and how much he was struggling with it,” Marakovits said.
At the end of the night, the trio, including WFAN fill-in play-by-player Justin Shackil and producer Josh Isaac, celebrated at a nearby restaurant, away from the team hotel where the scene was frenzied.
“It’s moments like that when you cover events like that — they make you want to be in the business and they make you want to stay in the business and make you incredibly proud of the place and the people you work with,” Marakovits said.
(Top photo of Domingo Germán: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
