How has it been 20 years already? We here at MMO will never forget all who lost their lives that day, the first responders, and all who serve to defend our freedom.
We stand united in remembrance of 9/11. Here are our thoughts and memories from that day.
Patrick Glynn
So I was 7. Mrs. [redacted] left the room crying, and she came back in and told her third-grade class planes hit the Twin Towers. A kid, whose name I still remember to this day for this and this alone, said “Cool!” He was 7, too.
She put the TV on, and we saw what everyone else saw, and that’s probably what I remember most from third grade, outside of making gingerbread houses and a couple lifelong friends. At some point, my mom picked me up from school and we walked home. By third grade, getting picked up before 4 p.m. and walking home was ultra rare even though 1) I lived about five minutes from the elementary school and 2) I’m pretty sure she still worked half days at that point and I didn’t *have* to go to after care?
I’m a millennial, so 9/11 was our first shared trauma. (The last year-and-a-half is, what, the fourth or fifth.) I had stitches on my face before my brain could form memories, and sure, I had more stitches on my face when I *could* form memories (I ran into a metal trash can while on a bike trying to copy my brother — I sliced a couple inches from my eye to cheek open). But 9/11 was the first thing my generation experienced together. Then bombs dropped on Afghanistan right before bed time. Then, living in south Florida, all the hurricanes from 2004 to 2007. The stock market crashed and friends had moms and dads who didn’t work anymore.
But then Osama bin Laden was killed, and America found out while Daniel Murphy was batting. I was a month away from graduating high school. I don’t remember the Piazza game. I was seven and living thousands of miles south. I relied on SportsCenter, and I was probably sleeping by the time those highlights came on. But I remember sitting there on the Sunday the Mets played the Phillies thinking some version of “cool.” And that’s my baseball connection to 9/11.
Logan Barer
I was seven years old on 9/11, so I don’t remember much. I remember being pulled out of school early, sat down on the couch with my younger siblings, and told about what happened. I don’t remember what was said, or how it was said, but I remember feeling sad. This remains one of my earliest memories.
Another of my earliest memories took place ten days later sitting in the nose-bleeds at Shea Stadium. This memory is a little more positive – I remember the stadium shaking after my favorite player at the time, Mike Piazza, hit a go-ahead home run in the 8th inning against the Braves in the first New York sporting event since 9/11.
Matt Musico
This is one of those moments where you’ll never forget where you were or what you were doing. For me, I was trying to stay awake in my third-period freshman Biology class. Someone called the teacher to the doorway, and then all she said was, “Ah, crap”, then wheeled the TV out from the back of the classroom and turned on the news.
We had a full day of school (at least I think we did), but it was so weird and so sad. It was all we talked about in each class. I remember getting home and watching TV with my family, just in shock over what we were watching, along with trying to understand it all.
Growing up in a small, suburban town, I felt safe for 99.9% of my childhood. This was one of those few times when I didn’t, simply because what was happening didn’t feel like real life.
Even when the Mets and Braves returned on September 21st, it was just different. I was excited for a distraction but was also worried about whether something bad would happen to everyone at the game. After all, who knew what to think anymore? Like everyone else, I was thankful for Piazza’s homer, not just because it helped me smile for the first time in a while, but that it was also a blast of normalcy at the same time.
Marshall Field
I’ll have my usual. My usual is a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich on a hard roll with just ketchup and a large coffee. I ordered it from my favorite luncheonette on a Tuesday morning, just before 8:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001. I was in a particularly good mood because I enjoyed my ‘usual’ and at the time of my career, I was off on Tuesdays. After receiving my food, I got in my car and began the short trip home.
Little did I know that life would never be the same once I got back. I put on CNBC as I was active in the stock market back in the day, but instead of watching interviews and stock prices, I saw one of the Twin Towers, the North Tower, billowing tons of smoke. Not ten minutes later, the South Tower was doing the same. Little did I know then that two separate aircraft had struck the towers in a terrorist attack. we all know what followed as news broke of a plane striking the Pentagon and another crashing in Shanksville, PA.
I called my wife and told her to come home from her office about 40 minutes away as it was unknown at the time how vast this attack would be. I grabbed my six-month old twins and held them tight. My wife arrived home safely and we were glued to the TV for hours, I remember it like it was yesterday.
The scariest part of the whole thing for my wife and me was that we were in NYC and drove past the towers on the way home,, the date? September 10, 2001 in celebration of my wife’s birthday.
Obviously, we as a family, and the nation has a whole have not fully recovered from the terrorist attacks. I can’t believe it’s been two decades. I hope the younger reader forgives the personal prose here, and the older reader can commiserate. It was awful. Truly awful.
Rich Sparago
As I look back at September 11, 2001, I think about how important baseball was in the recovery process. When times are hard, we tend to want some source of normalcy, some source of comfort that we will recover. It’s not hyperbole to say that Major League Baseball did just that in September of 2001. The resumption of the games provided a distraction from the horrible events. That was a great start. The next hurdle was for things to start to come back in New York. That happened on September 21. We all know what happened in the game. But it was more than that. There were more than 40,000 people at Shea Stadium on an uneasy night, but the point was made. We were not afraid. New York (and America) was going to heal. That was the most important part. As a personal reflection, I was in the city at that time. I left the Lincoln Tunnel for a meeting in Philadelphia at about 8:30. I missed the whole thing by minutes. I think about that every year on 9/11. I also think about not being able to return to the city for days, and when I did, feeling like I’d entered into an alternate reality. It wasn’t the place I had left just days before. The city had changed. The world had changed. But somehow, the game we all love played a small part in the recovery process.
Alex Horowitz
When the Mets and Yankees come together on September 11, 2021 to play a baseball game, the game will be secondary. Although I was a mere four years old in 2001, I’m well aware of the emotional impact that a Mets-Braves game brought to New York, and the entire nation. Since then, I’ve watched that Mike Piazza home run many times – and I can feel the immense emotion just from listening to Howie Rose’s magical call. On September 11, 2021, the evening at Citi Field will be about those we lost on 9/11 and remembering why we #NeverForget – having the Mets and Yankees play each other on the 20th year since 9/11 just feels right. For one night, there will be no rivalry. This is for New York. And for another day, for three hours, we can relax, watch a baseball game, and be happy.
Carl Aridas
On September 11, I was on the E train entering the WTC complex when the first plane hit the tower. I came up from the subway and was one block north of the WTC complex looking up at the North Tower and feeling powerless watching people jump from the 80th floor of the building when the second plane hit the South Tower. Remnants of the plane came through the Tower and to me it looked like it was heading for me and everyone standing shoulder to shoulder on the corner I was on.
We turned and ran north, and my immediate fear was both getting hit from falling metal and also getting stampede. I ducked into the building I was standing near while the crowd passed and the debris hit the roof of the building I was in. I found out later it had fallen through three floors. When I emerged a few minutes later I remember seeing dozens of women’s shoes on the ground as they had just run out of their shoes to get away as fast as possible.
For what seemed like forever, the fog of war took effect as I stumbled alone through the area trying to figure out where to go to get home. I remember helping a woman having what was thought to be a heart attack into an ambulance, and later helping a pregnant woman on a payphone call her husband to say her water had broken and she was going in an ambulance to NY Downtown and he should get there ASAP if he wanted to see his daughter born. Right after that I met a friend from work and we were right near city hall as the first Tower fell. For the second time that morning we ran, and covered in white powder from the Towers, made our way through ChinaTown and Little Italy. It was in Little Italy, where they were setting up for the San Gennaro Festival that a worker had the radio on and we learned that it was a terrorist attack. I did not make it home that day in Queens until well after regular working hours.
In the days that followed I learned I worked with three people who had perished, and knew of another seven former co-workers who had also died that day in the attack.
As for baseball, Mike Piazza’s home run is, of course, the most memorable sporting event immediately after the attacks. The Mets had already won three in a row after the attacks in Pittsburgh, beating the Braves at Shea, with our best player hitting the best home run was sort of like Batman beating up the Joker or any other show as a kid where the good guys always win. Of course, it was a monster shot. A wall scraper would not suffice in the Hollywood ending the Mets helped conduct.
The team did a tremendous amount for the first responders right after 9/11. Multiple players worked with first responders, and Shea served as a place to bring food and clothing for the workers. The Mets did not win that season. They finished in third, but that was irrelevant in the weeks after the attack. The Mets had won the first game in NY after the attack, and in a way only sports can do, it showed that for survivors life would continue after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Sal Manzo
It’s hard for me to fathom that it’s been 20 years since that horrible day on September 11th, 2001. I was in the fourth grade on that fateful day, and my elementary school made the decision not to tell students about the attacks, so it felt like a normal school day to an unsuspecting 10 year old. When school ended that day, however, I knew something was wrong. This was because my mom was there to pick me up, something that at that time NEVER happened because mom was always working at that time. When I ran up to her and asked why she was home so early, mom put her arm around me and said that there was an attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan, and it was important to be with family right now. Being so young I really didn’t understand what my mom was talking…until I saw the videos on the news when I arrived home. I will never forget the collective heaviness everyone felt the weeks and months following those horrible attacks, even as a little elementary school kid.
Michelle Ioannou
Why is everyone getting called out of my class? I was in fifth grade, reading class, and the intercom in my classroom kept going off with another kid’s name to come down to the office because their parent was here to pick them up. Then my name was called. I got my stuff, went into the office to sign out, and saw the office staff in tears. I then saw my mom with my brother, teary eyed. She hugged us, brought us home, where my father already was. They told us, as best as they could, what happened. From my house in Queens, we were able to see and smell the smoke, making it even more real. Why would someone do this? Was the rest of New York left or was this the only attack? Are we safe? Things a fifth grader wouldn’t usually have to think about.
The days after that were miraculous. The country came together. We supported one another. We made it through, somehow. Did baseball help that? You’re damn right it did. It gave us a sense of normalcy, that things were going to be okay again, and that Mike Piazza home run gave us all the hope we needed. Now, just let them all wear the first responder hats, please.
