The human condition isn’t defined by how we respond in times of joy. After all it’s easy to maintain a clear head and a strong heart when things are going your way.
Rather who we are as individuals and as a society is defined by how we respond when the odds are stacked against us, when the world gives us a forceful reminder that life is not in fact fair and there isn’t any way you’re going to get out of it without getting sucker punched at least once.
Our generation’s defining moment came on what started off as a quiet Tuesday morning ten years ago. On September 11, 2001, our innocence as a country was forever lost, our protective cocoon that had kept us safe from the awful things that only happened in other parts of the world burst open as we wiped the sleep out of our eyes and realized our country was under attack.
Retrosheet shows that on the morning of September 11th, the Diamondbacks and Giants were in a neck and neck battle for NL West supremacy while the Giants were clinging to a 1/2 game lead over the Cardinals for the NL Wild Card. The Braves were trying to hold on to their 3.5 game lead over the Phillies. Every race in the American League had been more or less decided with the Mariners and Yankees both holding double-digit division leads, the Indians up six games on the Twins and the Athletics running away with the Wild Card. 29-year-old Andy Abad was likely basking in the glow of his Major League debut from the night before.
But at 8:46 a.m. Eastern time, America received a jarring reminder of a simple axiom that many of us tend to forget when watching our favorite teams play our favorite games.
Sports, in the grand scheme of things, do not matter. Period.
Chances are if you were eight years old or older on 9/11/2001, you remember everything about that day moreso than any other day in your existence, the events of the day unfolding like some hazy black and white horror movie as you recall exactly where you were, who you talked to and how it shaped you as an individual.
I was a college sophomore at Purdue, sleeping on a futon in my fraternity house when I was awoken by a good friend of mine named Mike.
“Hey Lindner…dude, you’ve gotta come into Rich’s room, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” he said urgently.
This guy being a bit of a goofball, I brushed him off but he was insistent that something had in fact happened so in a sleep drunk haze, I followed him into one of the few rooms in our fraternity house with both a television and a satellite dish hookup. He and I got to the TV just in time to see the second plane crash in to the south tower of the World Trade Center live on CNN. I looked at Mike and just said “What the…” before flopping down resignedly on the couch to watch more coverage of the day’s events.
As word trickled out, more of our fraternity brothers gathered around the various TVs in the house, hoping to soak it all in. Together we watched both towers collapse in absolute horror, first the south tower and later the north, crumbling to the ground as though they were skyscrapers made of sand, not steel and concrete. There were reports of a crash at the Pentagon and that another plane – later learned to be United 93 – was heading toward the White House before the heroic actions of passengers and crew members brought it down in a rural Pennsylvania field.
Rumors and speculation were the focus of the day, with some wondering if Chicago’s Sears Tower or some other landmark close by was next. Because when something bigger than the scope of anything we had ever experienced before happens, speculation runs rampant as to what did happen and what is going to happen. Many of us checked to see if classes were cancelled because with our country under attack, who could focus on schoolwork at a time like this? One thing was for sure — our country was in fact at war, fighting an enemy that leveled us with a mighty suckerpunch.
Of course, all of my classes were in fact cancelled — except for an introductory biology course which had a quiz that day. Despite our pleas, the teaching assistant wasn’t budging and we had to take said quiz. I don’t think I’ve ever failed any piece of academia more spectacularly in my entire life. I’ll never forget the pencil shaking as I tried to fill in the scantron sheet and focus on things like the anatomy and sexual characteristics of a plant. Whatever the quiz was on, clearly I retained the knowledge.
That night on Purdue’s Slayter Hill, students held a candlelight vigil, thousands of us coming together as we struggled to digest what had just happened and what it was going to mean for us going forward. The solemn looks and tears on our faces were no different than they were on college campuses across the country that night. Thousands of our fellow Americans had just died in a senseless, unnecessary tragedy that we simply couldn’t wrap our minds around.
Another reminder that sports don’t matter, even if they are heated rivalries that seem like life or death at the time — Purdue and Notre Dame agreed to postpone their game scheduled to be played at Ross-Ade Stadium that weekend, just like every other college decided to put sports on the backburner for a little while to give students a chance to grieve. And we needed it. We needed a chance to try and digest the fact that from the moment the first plane crashed into the first tower at the World Trade Center our lives were not ever going to be the same as they were on September 10, 2001.
So how has the sports world changed? God Bless America remains omnipresent at baseball games just like it was in the first contests to be played following September 11th. Teams tend to be incorporating more patriotic elements into their wardrobes as well, from the Padres camoflage jerseys to the various patriotic hats that teams don on special occasions throughout the year. The games however have gone on, as well they should. While the outcomes don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, sports has always served as a blissful, mindless distraction from the vagaries of life, a three hour mental break from our troubles as we watch millionaires in pajamas chase a ball around a finely manicured field.
Whether or not we’re better off as a country is up for debate and it’s not one we’re going to foster here. Sports and politics belong in the same blog about as much as peanut butter and jelly belong on a bratwurst. One thing is for sure though — we haven’t forgotten what transpired that day, everything from the emotions it stirred up to where we were and who we were with. We haven’t forgotten the people who ran towards tragedy when most of us would be running from it, an act of heroism so great it defies words.
So if you’re out this weekend and you see a firefighter or a cop, buy them a beer. If – God forbid – something like this were to happen again, they are going to be the ones keeping some sense of calm amidst the chaos, saving lives and doing their best to return us to a sense of normalcy.
