NEW YORK – Sport heals.
This is what the media, leagues and groups claim on social media on Saturday, because twenty years ago, a series of terrorist attacks killed some 3,000 more people and culturally it is thought to be less impolite to say that than to say nothing. And because saying nothing at all is rarely an option.
I grew up largely in a post-September 11 world, or at least that’s when the peak of my critical thinking happened, meaning the conceited amalgam of lucrative games with literally life and death and my own cynical reaction. It seemed inevitable. A bloodless and reluctant edition of militarization has seemed to be a component of the pomp and cases that accompany the game. I didn’t know that on September 12, 2001, Hunter S. Thompson used his column on ESPN (ESPN!) Or how a year later, the same area would be filled with David Halberstam’s unwavering claim that gambling doesn’t heal.
So I was surprised to see baseball’s ambivalence about baseball in the new narratives of the September 11, 2001 sequels. He didn’t have the uncertainty of whether the Major Leagues would end the season or the strength of the feeling of the players themselves that suddenly felt small and even scared.
“You don’t have to be a space scientist to perceive that sporting events surely don’t make sense compared to what’s happening in Washington and New York,” Mark McGwire said Sept. 14, 2001, before then-Commissioner Bud Selig. would suspend play for about a week. returning with a limited list of games on September 17.
“It’s very petty to even bet a baseball game right now,” Chipper Jones said on the 16th.
Bringing baseball to the city that suffered the most, where the smoking remains of the Twin Towers would remain an active site of rescue and recovery for the months to come, even more challenging.
As that anniversary approached, members of the 2001 Mets, who hosted the Braves on the city’s first occasion since the skyline had been permanently altered, recalled the confused feelings of returning to New York and in the shea Stadium box.
“I don’t forget when we went down to Ground Zero, I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do,” John Franco, a Brooklyn local who pitched for the Mets for 15 years, said on a Zoom call with reporters. “And to see the looks on the faces of the firefighters and the faces of the rescuers, how tired they are and their faces full of dirt and you can see the white of the teeth. They were very, very tired even when they saw us, they were satisfied to see us. It made me feel like this was where we belonged at the time.
The stadium’s parking lot has been remodeled into a donation collection site, organized through team workers and little occupied by the players themselves, who met with first responders and the injured and the families of those who failed to make it. On September 21, ten days after the attacks, they also played a baseball game.
“On September 21, our first comeback game, I gathered my staff in the locker room and gave them a cheer speech because we all understood why we were betting baseball at a time like this,” Mets vice president Sue Lucchi said. President of Operations for over 28 years. who oversaw the assembly domain at Shea.
“We were scared,” Mets manager Bobby Valentine said at the time. “We were afraid in our hearts, that maybe they would attack us, and maybe we were doing it. “
To calm the first fear, the Mets and Braves were confident that the security point had made Shea the safest position in town that night, and for the second, they wait and see, taking their ambivalence with them in a move, impressive and starry pre-match ceremony.
“You need to enjoy the moment, but you realize how many other people were suffering and feeling the pain,” Al Leiter said Saturday, “so it was a contradictory state of mind. “
Now, with two decades of hindsight and a desire to give in to a resolution that can’t be reversed, Mets broadcaster Howie Rose explained that “getting back into the game isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the only thing you can do. do. “
But, of course, the former is true because the latter is indisputable.
Baseball back, not to cure yet because I had to. If you’re looking for it, there are iconic moments to discover in each and every game, so the Mets and their enthusiasts made sense in the first game played in New York after September 11.
“That when Mike [Piazza] came to the circuit,” Leiter said. Seeing other people who were a little flat compared to what happened that night and what happened in the field, they burst out, they went crazy. – I knew, other people knew – that it was the right thing to play.
On Saturday night in New York, the Mets and Yankees played a baseball game in front of a crowded house, a noisy and dramatic game, full of long balls and changes of advantage, they did not have to make it the right thing to do. and when an amateur tapped after running on the field, chants of “USA!”they seemed more made-up beats than a solemn remark. When the wave broke at the back of the seventh, the promise of a unified city through the game Turned out to have cracks: an entire segment of the gardens of the Mets fan group, the 7th Line Army, refused to participate and booed for the rest of the stadium.
Still, the production price of the pre-match pageantry is impressive, full of gravity and also cameos worthy of applause, in this way, it is a fitting tribute to what happened twenty years ago minus ten days ago at Shea Stadium, when the players did not know if they were going to laugh in the World Series atmosphere.
This is not an accusation of anything, and in fact it is not the sincerity of the ceremony. The other people who were revered on the floor deserved all this and more (such as really extensive sustained assistance for the long-term conditioning effects of their rescue and rescue paintings). around Ground Zero) And the other people who came to Citi Field did so for entertainment.
The symbolism was impressive and moving. So much so that it is possible that on Friday more people died in the country because of our current national crisis than in the attacks of 2001. We deserve to have been silent all night if they had observed a minute’s silence for everyone. of the endless pandemic. Or the Twenty Years’ War that followed September 11.
I think the game is helping other people feel better after a senseless tragedy by the same explanation of why they make other people feel smart on a past Saturday night in the summer. Honestly, I don’t know precisely what that explanation of why is, probably because it’s another for everyone: community, catharsis, the wonder of human fulfillment and the excitement of others winning, the physical display and uns written scenarios, the excuse to drink and socialize outdoors. History, rivalry, traditions, absurdity, nerd and natural fun.
Sometimes, the game is serious. And they don’t matter at all because anything else is so bad that it suffocates the air of a village and darkens the day like a cloud of carnage and ash so thick that you still can’t think of anything right in front of you.
But when they play the games, other people pass to them to get out of their heads and into their total heart. They will go on to have fun, to feel joy. If you don’t expect the wounds to heal, this might be enough.