09/11/2026
25 years later.
I was in fifth grade. I remember walking down the hall to my classroom. As I was walking, I looked into the teachers’ lounge and saw someone had rolled in one of those box TVs strapped to a cart, with the news playing.
That’s when I first saw the towers smoking.
Being a kid, I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew it couldn’t be good. I didn’t understand the magnitude of what I was watching or how much that day would change our country forever. I just knew something terrible had happened.
In the days and weeks that followed, baseball became one of the greatest “distractions,” for lack of a better word. Baseball reminded us that life would continue. That we could come together. That we were going to be okay.
From Mike Piazza’s home run to give the Mets the lead in the first game back in New York after the attacks, to Sammy Sosa storming the field waving the American flag, to George W. Bush firing a strike before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, those moments became about so much more than baseball.
For a few hours, people could cheer again.
Never forget.
