Each time we get ready to roll out another issue of
Zisk, I usually
buy a six-pack of Rolling Rock, and bottle of gin and a bunch of uppers and sit
in front of my antique PC and bang out my angry thoughts about the idiocy of
baseball’s owners and players. But this time around the rants have been
tempered by my love of baseball. More specifically, the renewed love of the
game I found on September 17th.
Every person in
America
(and many others around the world) had their own reactions and ways of dealing
with the events of September 11th. For me, it meant five nights in a row of
some hardcore drinking at bars in my old neighborhood in
Brooklyn;
the same bars that firefighters of Squad 1 (which was decimated) would go to.
Reading the paper morning after morning without a section devoted to the
previous night’s games (and how the Mets were gaining ground on .500) added to
the confusion of what the heck was going on in this world. (As was the
evacuations of my office building because of bomb threats next door.)
So September 17th arrived with games around the country. When I got home
from work, I immediately turned on the Mets-Pirates telecast from
Pittsburgh. They’re
weren’t a great deal of people in the stands, but those that were there wore I
(Heart) NY buttons given out at the gate. Every single time the Fox Sports New
York cameras were focused on the crowd, all you could see were little white
spots on each and every fan. The game was a good one too, but that was besides
the point—being able to cheer for
Mike Piazza or wonder if
Edgardo
Alfonzo would break out of his season-long slump made me feel like one
part of my life was there again. It gave me something good to hold onto, which
seemed impossible to do at that time.
That same night I flipped to ESPN to watch the ceremony at the beginning of
the Cardinals game. Their long-time announcer
Jack Buck,
wracked by Parkinson’s disease, stood in front of the Busch Stadium crowd and
gave a speech that brought everyone to tears—including that evil contraction
man
Bud Selig. “I got home early Monday, turned on television
and watched ceremonies in
St. Louis
with Jack Buck's speech. I cried,” he told the
Cincinnati Enquirer. “I
called Jack. I told him, ‘Now I know I made the right decision.' I watched not
only Jack but the crowd, their faces and their emotions. I knew they were glad
to be together.” Selig, for the first time in his life, had made a wise decision
by waiting a week until letting the season resume.
One more thing I learned after September 11th is that
Curt Schilling
is a decent man. He wrote a thoughtful open letter, which the following
excerpts are taken from:
“Words cannot heal your wounds, not even time will heal the wounds for those
who have suffered loss this week. But other than money and blood, which I hope
the players in
MLB will be giving
of both, it is all we have to offer.
We will step on the fields of Major League Baseball on Monday night, but
please know that we are not doing this as an aversion to forget what happened
on Tuesday. Nothing will ever make us forget that day. But we are doing so
because it is our jobs, and I honestly feel that if you do have a chance to
catch a few minutes of a game, and see every sports fan in every stadium stand
for that initial moment of silence, and understand when we do so that we do so
for you, and for your families. And in the seventh-inning stretch when this
nation sings "God Bless
America,"
we do so because we can, because in this country men and woman have died so
that we can continue on as a free nation, and we will be thinking of you then
also.
And it's my belief that if you watch close enough you will see players, many
players in fact, trying in some small way to say thank you, and that we won't
forget you or your loved ones as some of us will have messages scrawled
somewhere on our hats or uniforms that you can read.
We will proudly wear the great flag of this country on our uniforms, and it's
something I hope baseball adopts forever.”
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