The George Washington Bridge was a ghost of itself, quiet and empty, save for one charter bus and its police escort, which stopped some part of the way across, giving sight to the wreckage.
Todd Zeile remembers the Mets having to take a bus from Pittsburgh, since nearly everyone in the country was afraid of flying. It might have been 2 a.m., he said. Time felt fuzzy and fleeting — days disappearing in an instant despite the languishing, painful moments that seemed to stretch on for forever.
It had been that way since a few days earlier, when two planes hit the Twin Towers, another the Pentagon, and another crashed in Pennsylvania, all part of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.
The eight-hour bus ride, where the Mets had been stranded in a rural hotel near Pittsburgh, squirreled away from the probability of attack, had been muted. But when they crossed the bridge, the silence was thick and all-consuming.
"We could see all the way downtown," Zeile said ahead of the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. "You could hear a pin drop and you could see the lights shining up from where the towers had been. The smoke was still billowing. We could smell the smell of electrical fire and then, I think, the only audible sounds were the sounds of guys sniffling — the emotions of that moment and the reality of what we were seeing. The towers we had seen thousands of times were gone."
So much has been said and written about those difficult days, when baseball meant nothing. But the weeks after 9/11 make up a rich portrait, and one that very much includes the 2001 Mets — a team that embraced a city in the midst of tragedy, spearheaded humanitarian efforts, and then played a game that goes down as one of the most culturally and emotionally significant sporting events in U.S. history.
Through it all, there are stories. Stories of doubt, of fear, of resilience, of everyone from first responders to stadium workers who were called to action. There’s the story of one fateful trade: a single Mets hat for an NYPD hat. Another of biker gangs and nuns, all joining in the relief mission at Shea Stadium. And then, of course, there was the group of baseball players, all deeply in over their heads, and a manager so thoroughly unwilling to stand by and do nothing.
SHOW OF STRENGTH
No one really remembers the first few days.
John Franco recalls being worried for his kids, who lived in Staten Island but were in school in Brooklyn when the planes hit. Zeile just remembers not caring about baseball; Lenny Harris, too.
As for Bobby Valentine, it’s all blank. He knows he took a commercial plane home to LaGuardia Airport, eschewing the charter bus because he wanted to set an example and show that flying wasn’t the enemy. "Or, who knows, I’m crazy," he said.
For him, there was just one, monopolizing idea — the pressure and purpose behind what was going to happen next, the absolute necessity that he and his players do right by the city that loved them.
"That was my only thought," he said. "There was this idea — it was more than an idea, I think it was even told to us — that the bad guys were going to be watching, that we were supposed to be down and out, but we had to put on our best face, to project an image of strength, not only for the bad guys who were watching but for the people who were looking to us for strength."
It was the thought that bound them all together: Zeile worrying before his trip to Ground Zero, wondering what a baseball player could possibly do to help, but going anyway. Franco and Al Leiter, the locals, on trucks and still in uniform, loading box after box, the rest of the team joining; Joe McEwing driving a forklift. And Harris, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the pain he was seeing.
"What we experienced in that parking lot was a feeling of exhaustion," Valentine said, "and kind of futility, because we were supporting a rescue effort, and no one was ever rescued."
COMING TOGETHER AT SHEA
Shea Stadium was supposed to be a triage center. Then it was supposed to be a morgue.
Finally, it became a place for supplies. Pallets and pallets of flashlights and blankets and clothes, a delivery of axes with handles so big they needed to be sawed down before relief workers could use them. And it started with a white dry-erase board.
Sue Lucchi, the vice president of stadium operations, said she and her boss, Kevin McCarthy, did what they could to prepare Shea for the influx of wounded that never came. As for the morgue, authorities thought it would be best to bring bodies to the nearby skating rink at Flushing Meadows Park.
And so Lucchi, embroiled in a do-something mode that left little room to contemplate the full brunt of the trauma she was experiencing, grabbed a dry-erase board board from the conference room. She scrawled: "Please drop donations here."
Within 24 hours, the Red Cross reached out, and people had started coming from all over. People slept on cots in the stadium lobby, and first responders used the Jets' old locker room to shower. Lucchi and McCarthy organized it all, barely sleeping.
One day a group of nuns came to help, but no one quite knew what to do with them, so Lucchi, not a singer, began to sing, and everyone sang along. People prayed together. And when the Mets finally got back from Pittsburgh, they were put to work, along with front-office members, management and clubhouse personnel. "Not one guy said no," Franco said.
With no games being played, the Mets would go do their purgatorial workouts at Shea, not always quite sure exactly what the point was, and then go in uniform to work in the parking lot. The boxes of supplies numbered in the thousands.
Mets manager Bobby Valentine in the center helping workers with boxes of food and supplies at Shea Stadium that are destined for the rescue workers at Ground Zero on Sept. 16, 2001. Credit: Newsday/Paul J. Bereswill
"It wasn’t Bobby Valentine, it was just another person volunteering," Lucchi said. "None of them were asked for autographs. It wasn’t about that. It was more about, here’s a major league baseball player next to you and they’re sorting clothing and tools just like you were. It was about coming together in a time of tragedy."
Valentine would work late nights, along with Lucchi and McCarthy, and Mets PR maven Jay Horwitz, and he said he was probably with them sometime between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. when the bikers descended.
There was a huge need for flashlights at Ground Zero and an Atlantic City hotel had sent over an 18-wheeler full of them. The problem: There were only a handful of people at Shea, and all the flashlights were encased in "that impenetrable plastic no one can open," Valentine said. They needed to be assembled, too. It was going to take them days they didn’t have to spare.
"Then there was a roar," he said. It was about 40 bikes, some with one rider and others with two, plenty of leather and chains among them. Valentine thought they were about to be robbed.
"They stopped at the fence that separated the parking lot, and I remember telling Kevin, ‘Anything they want, they can have,’ " he said. "Then they yelled over the fence, ‘Hey, do you guys need any help?’ And I comically said, ‘Does anyone have a knife?’ There were people laughing and they all jumped the fence. In the end, we were done in two hours with something I promise would have taken two days . . . Then they got on their bikes and left. There wasn’t a single photo taken."
Valentine doesn’t know who they were, only that he wishes he did.
A TRADE AT GROUND ZERO
The decision to finally go down to Ground Zero wasn’t taken lightly by the eight or nine players who, along with Valentine, made the trip, and plenty of them doubted whether it was a good idea right up until the moment they were there.
"We were a handful of baseball players going down to meet people in the most vulnerable stage of their lives, looking for their closest friends and family and still wondering if it was a rescue effort or a recovery effort," Zeile said. "I felt like it could be invasive. What could a baseball player like me have to offer?"
Their faces were covered in "black smut and dirt" and sadness and exhaustion, said Franco, who lost two friends, members of the FDNY.
"But you could see a change in their faces when they saw that group of us," Zeile said. It was a respite, if only a brief one. It was a reminder of a time before all this, before life became all about death and soot and frantic searches that ended in nothingness.
They brought jerseys, caps and T-shirts, all of which felt trivial. Until, that is, Zeile traded a Mets hat for an NYPD hat. As he looked around at Mike Piazza, Robin Ventura, Franco and Leiter, a decision was made: The hats were coming with them to Pittsburgh when play resumed on Sept. 16, and Zeile would wear the one he traded for.
"It was a matter of tribute," Zeile said. "So we ordered them" for the rest of the team.
After that, hesitance evaporated. They went to firehouses and hospitals and visited "central command" at the Jacob Javits Center to speak with families. They learned to look out for a certain alarm at Ground Zero, which warned of the threat of loose steel beams.
"There was some value of having some sense of familiarity," Zeile said, "of something that reminded them of something good."
FROM RIVALS TO COMRADES
Baseball had to return to this reeling city eventually, though some didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, adamant that New York show it was more than its greatest tragedy, believed the city was ready on Sept. 21, 2001, and Major League Baseball agreed. The Mets weren’t quite sure, though.
"I really had no energy for coming to the ballpark," Harris said. "I didn’t really think we should have played that night, but we ended up playing . . . Everything was out of me. I just felt everything for the people that had been lost."
Harris said the police presence that day at Shea reminded him of his time playing in Venezuela — officers with machine guns, bomb-sniffing dogs, snipers high up in the air. Before the game, the team sat in the locker room, almost in a state of shock. They didn’t know if there would be 10,000 people there or 40,000, or what they could offer them.
Harris remembers finally stepping out, "and it felt like the whole world was at the ballpark," he said. "I was so surprised so many people showed up."
Shea Stadium’s capacity was around 57,000 for baseball, and 10 days after a terrorist attack, and despite the fear of another, 41,235 of those seats were occupied.
Much of the game and pregame passed by in a blurred dream state, though Harris said some moments were unforgettable. Diana Ross sang "God Bless America," before being scurried away by a security escort. Marc Anthony did the Star-Spangled Banner. Liza Minelli and a kickline performed to "New York, New York" during the seventh-inning stretch. There were bagpipes, a lingering moment of silence and a Marine rifle team doing a 21-gun salute. Lucchi and McCarthy had made it so the towers on the skyline in the outfield had been blacked out, a commemorative ribbon in its place.
The players didn’t know that Valentine and Bobby Cox, then Atlanta’s manager, would meet at home plate before the game to shake hands, but it had been their plan. Soon, both teams — heated rivals with sometimes real strife between them — came together, too. They shook hands, they hugged, they whispered to each other thoughts of comfort and comradeship.
"I don’t know if it’s ever happened in a pro game before and I’ll be willing to bet it will never happen in a pro game again," Valentine said. "It will always remain as something other than a game. It was a spectacular game that had a superhero perform a super act. Who could have written that script?"
Mets manager Bobby Valentine and Braves manager Bobby Cox embrace at home plate as the two teams come together at Shea Stadium on Sept. 21, 2001, for the first game in New York after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Credit: Newsday/Paul J. Bereswill
FINALLY, SOMETHING TO CHEER FOR
The Mets were down by one run with Steve Karsay in to pitch for Atlanta. Karsay, who grew up in College Point, just minutes from Shea Stadium, threw a fastball on the outside part of the plate — exactly the type of pitch Piazza could extend his arms on, and rocket outside the park. The two-run homer, off the TV camera stands in left-center, gave the Mets the 3-2 win. But it gave the crowd something more.
"You could sense the sigh of relief," said Franco, who was in the dugout after having pitched in the top of the eighth inning. "You look up in the stands and people are jumping up and screaming and yelling and smiling and there are tears in their eyes . . . Your hair stands up on your arms. We weren’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but once we saw the crowd reaction, and how it made the fans feel, I think it was the right thing to do. For a couple hours, we put a Band-Aid on a big wound."
Zeile said there was a sense of, "Well, of course it happened."
"The place came unglued," he said. "I get chills thinking about it today. I think maybe even Atlanta felt like it was right — maybe not necessarily at that exact moment, but certainly in retrospect. I think everyone agreed that’s the way it should have been scripted, and it was."
Valentine: "It was like an alarm going off . . . It woke me from the daze I was in."
It did the same for so many people, including a family in the stands that had just lost their father. Carol Gies, whose husband, Ronnie, a firefighter who gave his life to save others, was there with her three boys, one of whom was interning for the team.
Lucchi was out of sorts that night, watching in a suite despite nursing a painful injury she got while packing supplies, but she remembers Carol.
"I saw it in the newspaper the next day, this picture of the three boys hugging their mother in the stands," Lucchi said. "She’s got her husband’s firefighter shirt on, and they’re — all four of them — crying."
Gies told her the home run was the moment she realized her family would get through it, somehow.
"Her kids were cheering for the first time in 10 days," Lucchi said. "They weren’t crying. It was the first time she had seen happiness on their faces since their dad died . . . That’s when she knew life would go on."
And it did, though painfully. All three boys became firefighters.
The Mets continued their efforts on and off the field, and despite a rousing September, they missed the playoffs. The current team spent years fighting to wear the 9/11 first responder caps again and MLB finally allowed it this year.
Lucchi, meanwhile, still has folders and folders of letters and cards, thanking her and the team for what they did during that time. She doesn’t have many pictures of the actual relief effort. She wishes she had a few, though the memories will have to suffice.
Harris still wonders if it was too soon. If everything was still too raw for baseball. But he takes pride in how they handled an impossible time, despite being a bunch of guys who play a game for a living.
"I think the world should be treated like that every single day," he said. "We shouldn’t have to go through something like that just to unite with people around the world. Every day, we should come together."
It’s a hard-fought lesson the world is still learning, but for a few weeks in a dusty parking lot in Flushing, it came true.
YANKEES VS. METS ON SEPT. 11, 2021
During the Subway Series game, both the Mets and Yankees will wear first responder caps during batting practice and the game.
Bobby Valentine will throw the first pitch to Joe Torre, who managed the Yankees during the attacks. First responders and charity organizations dedicated to 9/11 victims will be honored on the field.
After the game, Tuesday’s Children, a non-profit dedicated to those affected by the attacks and other mass tragedies, will honor five Mets during a Sept. 23 dinner at Citi Field – Valentine, John Franco, Al Leiter, Todd Zeile and Edgardo Alfonzo. Tickets are available by emailing Kristen Bradley at Kristen@tuesdayschildren.org.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
