If Plato had been a baseball fan watching this game on the wall of his cave, he might have blocked the shadows and declared it the worst game that could ever possibly be played and there was no point in discussing it.

And Aristotle, had he been there with Plato, might have argued that they should discuss the game on its own merits without reference to some kind of universal absolute. "Yes," Tolstoy might have agreed from the kitchen. "For baseball games are like families: good baseball games are all alike; every bad baseball game is bad in its own way."

We tend to agree with Aristotle and Tolstoy. For this particular game was particularly bad in particular ways. But where should we begin? Perhaps we should get the bright spots out of the way for they are few and don't deserve to be obscured by the insults to professional baseball uttered this Sunday afternoon at Metropolitan Stadium.

Ron Scheuler pitched a complete game, four-hitter, allowing only three runs and striking out 10, in service of his first win of the season. His perfomance was notable all the more so for his having been pressed into the rotation at the last very last minute coming out of Spring Training.

Wayne Gross had himself an afternoon, clubbing two home runs and a double and scoring three runs. But as far as the Oakland Athletics go, Gross's performance is the exception that proves just how abominably bad his teammates performed today. At the plate, Gross accounted for all three of the team's runs and three of their four hits.

The A’s couldn't hit, they couldn't pitch, and they couldn't field.

The Athletics allowed 15 runs on 13 hits and 8 errors. Of Minnesota's 15 runs, thirteen of them were unearned. Seven of the eight errors led directly to runs being scored. The A's committed two errors for every hit they got.

Tony Scott, the Oakland second baseman was the worst of a bad bunch, committing 3 errors. Shortstop Rob Picciolo, first baseman, Dick Allen, right fielder Tony Armas, and pitchers Jim Umbarger and Rick Langford committed one error apiece.

Minnesota sent at least seven batters to the plate in four consecutive innings - seven in the 2nd, ten in the 3rd, seven in the fourth, and eight in the fifth.

Minnesota did not perform unimpeachably, either, committing two errors of their own. One by Roy Smalley and another, three-base error, by Bob Gorinski that allowed Wayne Gross to get to third before scoring on a Tony Armas groundball to short. The ten errors combined between the two teams, eclipsed the record of nine set by the Giants and White Sox in Game 5 of the 1917 World Series.

So there you have, in all its particulars, what might be the worst-played game in the history of the sport, a once-in-a-century horror that will stand as a testament to futility.

A naive optimist, looking for a silver-lining, might say what's done is done, this game is in the past, and when Oakland next takes the field on Tuesday in Milwaukee they will play better and they will erase the memory and eliminate the effect of this one bad outing.

An experienced fan of the game recognizes this as naive because it is a near-certainty that Oakland will play better in their next game and, quite probably, in every one of their remaining 152 games this season. That's how bad this game was.

But this leaves unanswered the question of whether this was the worst game that could be played, instead of merely the worst game that has been played.

While those statements are identical but for one word, the chasm between them is vast. The latter involves only that which has occurred. The former encompasses all that ever was, is, and could possibly ever be.

Imagine the consequences for the psyches of the Oakland Athletics organization, players, front office, and fans, if they knew that what had just occurred was the worst game of possible. Confronted with that, the true optimist finds solace in the statement: "Things can always be worse."

Minnesota's record is now 8-2 and they sit atop the American League West. Oakland, rightly and justly, sits in last place in the West, five games out of first, with a record of 3-7.