The (Last) Time Sports Stood Still

When COVID started raging out of control last March and we all began suffering through lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, we didn't even have sports to keep us occupied.  When society shut down, that included all competitive sports, as well.  Sports didn't return for months.  To suddenly not have sports was certainly an abrupt change.  But it wasn't the first time the entire sports world shut down.

Over the weekend, as we were commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I thought back to 20 years ago and the role sports played in the aftermath of that day.  But not right away.  Unlike with the COVID pause, when America wanted and needed the distraction but couldn't have it, sports were the furthest thing from anyone's mind in the days after 9/11.  The horror we witnessed that day was the only thing we could think about.  Playing sports would've felt inappropriate.

The other big difference between sports after COVID and sports after 9/11, of course, is the role sports played.  After COVID, everything just felt and looked weird.  After 9/11, it was just the opposite.  Things felt normal again.  More importantly, it made it OK to be happy, even if it was for something as simple as a game-winning home run or touchdown pass.

Both returns were all about timing.  With COVID, it was a matter of when they'd be allowed to even play, knowing that they'd have to wait a long time to have fans in the stands.  After 9/11, the safety concern wasn't about people getting each other sick with a deadly virus.  The sheer act of playing the game and fans gathering to watch it wasn't a "dangerous" activity in and of itself.  Rather, the worry was about whether thousands of fans in a sold out NFL or MLB stadium was a prime target for the next attack.

In 2001, we only went a week without sports.  The NFL and MLB simply moved the postponed games to the end of the season and pushed the playoffs back, but they were both back up and running again by the following Monday.  And the timing felt right.  America needed and got time to process what had happened and to grieve.  Then, when we were ready for them, sports were there for us again.

And who can forget Mike Piazza's home run in the Mets' first home game after the attacks?  Or the Yankees' run to the World Series, when they suddenly had America rooting for them for a change?  Or that beautiful poem that Jack Buck wrote and recited in St. Louis?  And so many different examples from all across the country that showed just how much people's teams meant to them.

Of course, we also had a memorable World Series and a memorable Super Bowl post-9/11.  That seven-game classic between the Yankees and Diamondbacks is widely considered one of the greatest World Series of all time.  And, the following February, the Legend of Tom Brady was born when the Patriots used a last-second field goal to beat the Rams.  Obviously, what none of us knew at the time was that Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl would soon become such a regular occurrence that most people got sick of it.

It's ironic, too, that the February Super Bowl, which also became a regular occurrence, was a direct result of 9/11.  There was no off week between the Conference Championship Games and Super Bowl that season, so they had to move the Super Bowl back, too, from its traditional last Sunday in January date to the first Sunday in February.  As it turns out, Super Bowl XXXVII the next year would be the last January Super Bowl.

Ditto with the November World Series.  Pre-9/11, the idea of baseball in November was crazy.  When that World Series got pushed back, it became a possibility.  Then when it went seven, it became reality.  Suddenly, we had November baseball.  And Derek Jeter gave us our first classic November baseball moment (he totally should've had "Mr. November" on his Hall of Fame plaque!).  And, while Baseball still tries to avoid it if possible, the idea of baseball in November suddenly isn't a crazy concept anymore.  (Game 7 this season is scheduled for November 3.)

There was one event that was delayed a year post-9/11--the Ryder Cup.  The U.S. team was scheduled to travel to Europe just two weeks later, and there was justifiable apprehension about that, so they moved it to 2002, but still called it the 2001 Ryder Cup (kinda like the "2020" Olympics).  What's ironic about that is, with the 2020 Ryder Cup also postponed a year because of the pandemic, they're back on the original odd-year schedule (which, with golf in the Olympics now, is actually better since they won't be in the same year moving forward).

Another thing about the events of 9/11 that always strikes me is how the last game completed before the world changed forever was the New York Giants' loss to Broncos in the Week 1 Monday Night Football game.  It ended after midnight, so it actually finished on 9/11 New York time.  And the Giants left right after the game, so it was literally just a few hours between their getting home and New York's skyline suddenly looking completely different.

Everyone who was alive that day remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001.  I was a sophomore in college sitting in my 8:30 class.  We heard rumblings, but I didn't know the true extent of what was going on until my class ended.  Then I just stood there watching in horror for an hour before my next class.

Then, a few days later, I was ready to feel something else.  Fortunately, sports were there, and that made it OK to be happy again.  Rooting for the Yankees and Giants was catharsis.  It's something you didn't even know how much you needed.  Just watching and tuning everything else.  It was normal.  And there's nothing wrong with normal.

Does any of this sound familiar?  While the reasons for the sports shutdowns in 2001 and 2020 were very different, the returns from those breaks were actually very similar.  Both times, we realized how sports are both so important and so unimportant at the same time.  And both times, it made us appreciate them so much more when they came back.