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After 9-11: A Bright Shining Moment

By ericlincoln, Section Other Sports
Posted on Mon Sep 11 2006 at 9:26 PM EST
More on: (all tags)

There is a row of hats all dating from 2001 that hang above my desk. Mets and Yankee and Football Giants hats all bearing an American flag on the side, reminding me that for a brief shining moment, sports did something very right in the autumn of 2001.

New York --- There is a old gang of New York City firefighters I've known for decades now who always attended a New York Giants football game perhaps once a season, a day of brotherhood in the Meadowlands back in the 80s and 90s.

That was before terrorists attacked us all on 9/11, before the whole world seemed to change in the dust of the falling Twin Towers that awful morning five years ago.

Nowadays this gang of four attends every Giants home game with a true sense of purpose, and at the direct behest and order of the Football Giants themselves. These veterans of Ground Zero now savor every minute, sharing memories and moments, from tailgating to the rush of the game itself.

See, it used to be a gang of seven, but three are gone forever, having perished, never found, inside the ruins of the twisted rubble of Ground Zero.

"This is one way we remember those guys," one firefighter tells me. "We come here, wave a flag and we feel good. If it's just for a few hours, we feel good. And after 9/11, the way the Giants treated us, we thought this would be the right way of remembering our friends each week, and every year."

"And it's a way of saying thank you to the Giants and the NFL."

It was five years ago when America turned its lonely eyes to a new generation of American heart throbs --- the gents who lugged the footballs and slugged the baseballs, distracting us all briefly from the horrors of the terrorist attack. And back then, when we needed them, these sportsmen idols did their job perfectly under a red, white and blue aura of patriotism.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig combined to do the right thing. After conferencing, after an appropriate time for grieving, it was rightly decided that Americans would be given some relief from the tragedy --- stealing precious moments from the sound of bagpipes --- as gifted athletes played their marvelous games over and over again.

Our sportsmen also stepped in quietly and effectively to offer comfort to those directly affected by the attacks.

One immediate result were games of all kinds played with a patriotic fervor not seen since the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games.

And New York outfits such as the Giants and Mets, Jets and Yankees, pitched in to turn the tragic events of 9/11 into an up close and personal journey for those who suffered the most,using stadiums as depots and rest stations for police and firefighters.

And gents such as Mike Strahan and Mike Piazza, Curtis Martin and John Franco appeared at firehouses and precinct stations to sign autographs and shake hands, day after day.

With the Giants in the forefront, players in hard hats found their way down to the hallowed site of Ground Zero even as iron and twisted steel burned long into the night.

"It may not seem like much, "my firefighter friend says, "but when you see the (players) on television the night before, and then you see them in your firehouse or at Ground Zero, man that was something. We had a sense that the world was rooting for us."

On this fifth anniversary, a ladder company in Manhattan, still maintains a shrine to the 2001 Mets. A police precinct in the borough of Queens maintains a wall of autographed photos of the Jets posed with the local cops. And every Bronx firehouse seems like a shrine to the New York Yankees.

"You ask ten guys in this fire house who won in 2001, they will not remember. They remember that the Yankees, and that George (Steinbrenner) had us raise the flag at the first game of the World Series. That's what we remember. "

"Most of these guys were coming from Ground Zero, walking into Yankee Stadium to see their heroes," one firefighter says. "

Most of us will always believe it was the other way around.

C. Eric Lincoln is a former sports writer for Newsday and the New York Times.