It seems hard to comprehend, but it’s been 25 years since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. Time stops for no one. Personal circumstances may change, but for anyone of a certain age, the emotions they felt on 9/11, remain painfully fresh.
There’s a full generation that has no memory of that world-changing event, but nobody should ever forget. I wrote this column two years ago and will present it, once again, with updates from a year ago, as the world pauses to recognize, with sadness, the day 25 years ago that changed the way we look at the world and its ability to keep us safe. Baseball has never been immune to the problems of the real world.
Prior to Friday’s anthems, the Blue Jays will ask for a moment of silence before facing the Orioles and even though the terrorist attack that brought down the Twin Towers was 25 years ago, it’s still remembered as a “where were you?” moment, similar to the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of JFK, the Dec. 8, 1980 killing of John Lennon and the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, dates that live in infamy and continue to be acknowledged annually. We will never forget. Sometimes it seems we never learn.
To place the aging of this tragedy in some sort of baseball perspective, consider that the youngest eight players on the current Blue Jays 40-man roster, Ricky Tiedemann, Brett Bateman, Charles McAdoo, Sean Keys, Trey Yesavage, Jonatan Clase, John Klein and Yohendrick Pinango were not yet born. It’s like 1966 was to Pearl Harbor.
For those readers too young to remember, here are some details of the horrific terrorist attack. The Sept. 11 morning began with two commercial airliners flying out of Boston’s Logan Airport that were then hijacked by terrorists on board and purposely crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, bringing the New York landmarks down in a horrific collapse of burning fuel, pancaked concrete and tangled steel, causing then and later to over 3,000 deaths. In addition, was a further attack from a plane that damaged the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and a fourth airliner brought down in rural Pennsylvania, believed headed for the White House.
In the wake of that tragedy, major-league baseball shut down for a week, resuming games, following the original schedule, starting on Sept. 19. The MLB games that had been postponed were then added to the end of the year, Oct. 1-7, meaning that this World Series between the Yankees and Diamondbacks became extended, for the first time ever reaching into the month of November.
A cathartic moment for major-league baseball, New York City and all of America came when President George W. Bush dramatically threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 3 at Yankee Stadium, striding to the mound with a Kevlar vest under his Yankee windbreaker, delivering a perfect strike. I was in the press box for that game and still get chills thinking about the President’s performance. It may be one of the few times from a personal viewpoint that 50,000 people cheering and chanting “USA! USA!” seemed perfect and appropriate.
Almost everybody has a story about where they were and what the anniversary means to them. Here are several such stories among those in the Blue Jays family.
Buck Martinez was in his first year as Blue Jays manager and his Jays had just played a series in Detroit, ending on Sept. 9. Buck had flown from Motown and spent the off-day with family in New Jersey. On the morning of Sept. 11, with a game that night, he was driving with his wife, Arlene, down the east coast I-95 to Baltimore to rejoin his team for a series, vs. the Orioles. He heard details of the terrorist attacks on his car radio, early on in the drive, and by the time he arrived at the team hotel, the O’s series had been cancelled and his coaches were waiting, gathered in his suite.
“It’s funny, (then pitching coach) Mark Connor always sends me and Garth (Iorg) a text every September 11 and he always says, ‘miss you guys’ and ‘a lot of memories together’,” Buck recalled. “I look forward to (receiving) it every year.”
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2025, during Jays BP, Martinez confirmed that the tradition of exchanging text messages with his close friends continued.
“We all kind of gathered and watched it on television in my room. Nobody said a word. We just sat there and watched. Couldn’t believe it. It hit all of us, but it hit Mark really hard, because he was from New York and had roots there with the Yankees. So, he was really affected.
“Then there were thoughts that the World Trade Center in Baltimore, close to (the newly opened Marriott) where we were at the Inner Harbor, might be another target,” Buck recalled. “That had everybody anxious. Our security guy, Ron Sandelli, was there with us and we knew we were just stuck there. Obviously, there were no planes flying (in American airspace). We took four buses (10 hours) back (to Toronto).”
As for John Schneider, he was already back on campus at the University of Delaware for his senior year as a Blue Hens catcher, after a summer playing in the Cape Cod League. The current Jays manager had been drafted in June 2001 by the Tigers, rejecting their offer as a 24th round pick. Instead, the 21-year-old, Princeton, NJ native, headed back to class, in the hopes of improving his stock in the ‘02 draft.
“That was an awful day,” Schneider, the Jays’ fifth-year skipper began. “My brother (worked) two blocks away from the towers. I remember I was going to class on Tuesday, couldn’t find a parking spot so just decided to shit-can class that day. Came home and my roommate was glued to the TV.
“I had uncles (in New York) … my brother was right there. Cell phones were not working. You’re keeping in touch through instant messenger. Shitty day. I remember going to (Blue Hens) practice that afternoon. All flights were suspended and I heard fighter jets going over our field. It was not great, just because of where I grew up and had a lot of people affected.”
My personal story: I was at home in Oakville, scheduled to fly to Baltimore early afternoon for the start of the Jays’ series. I had just dropped off our two youngest children, Shannon and Patrick, at St. Bernadette’s Elementary and drove home looking forward to a trip to what still is my favourite ballpark. I poured a coffee and glanced up at the TV. The CNN Breaking News report on screen was simply of an airline accident at the World Trade Center. No panic. Sat down on the sofa.
Speculation from that CNN reporter was that a small private plane may have steered off course and flown into one of the towers. As the reporter spoke from the street in the Wall Street District, visible in the background, over his right shoulder, in real time, a second plane crashed into the other tower and, at that moment, the world, as we knew it, ceased to exist. I was frozen in my seat.
Our bosses at The Toronto Star sent out an urgent special request to all employees who had not been scheduled to work that day. There was a special section being produced to be distributed that afternoon.
They were asking all-hands-on-deck to volunteer with writing, production and distribution. It was then that I self-discovered that I would never become one of those grizzled, salty, veteran reporters with the fedora that says “Press” whose goal in life is to get the story first, no matter what. I was a sports guy. Instead, I sat in a daze on the sofa of my living room and watched 15 straight hours of live CNN coverage.
During that eyes-wide-open nightmare, my mind drifted to related memories. There was one experience that I thought was amusing, but now still haunts me. In the early ‘90s, when I was with the Expos, we had flown to New York to face the Mets. The charter landed at LaGuardia very late at night, unfortunately the team buses were parked at Kennedy. Simple mistake. The charter plane took off for the 10-minute flight between the two major NYC airports. The improvised route in a darkened City That Never Sleeps took us across Manhattan and I remember thinking as we banked around, very close to the Twin Towers, low and about the actual height of the building. I remember looking into the lighted office of one of the upper floors, able to see what was on desks and other details, wondering who might work there, marvelling at how close we had flown. In hindsight, it has only become chilling.
How much did the world change and remain changed in the aftermath of 9/11? Consider this. My then-colleague at the Star, award-winning writer Geoff Baker, now a vice-president with the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, was already in Baltimore waiting for the series to begin. And, yes, The Star used to travel both a reporter and columnist to many road cities back in the day, as did the Toronto Sun.
The Trade Center had already been hit as Geoff began his day, but when further news emerged of a simultaneous attack at the Pentagon, Baker, whose background was as a news journalist at The Montreal Gazette, negotiated hard to rent the last available car from an Avis counter in Baltimore and drove two hours to the nation’s capital to cover the important news story of an attack at the country’s national defence headquarters.
Without a real plan to work from, Baker parked as close to the Pentagon as he could, hampered by the number of police, fire and emergency vehicles. He somehow worked his way to where he saw the biggest crowd of first responders and news people was and flashed his Baseball Writers card to the police … who then waved him in for a closer view. Unbelievable. The world has really changed since then.
A 2001 BBWAA card gave Geoff from Toronto access to cover an act of terrorism? Now we can’t even get from Rogers Centre clubhouse direct to the field with that same credential. That’s how much things have changed in the way the world works and has never and will not ever be the same. Never forget the lessons of 9/11 and say a prayer in memory of the victims and their families, honouring those memories.
The Blue Jays, meanwhile, this weekend turn their attention to the AL Wildcard race, with six games remaining vs. the Orioles and three each against the Rangers, Tigers and Reds. Somehow on this saddest of days, that somehow seems unimportant.
Wow, Richard, an elegant approach to 9/11 and baseball. Touching.