‘The Week that sports stood still.”
Sports Illustrated may have said it best with that plastered on its cover last week. Sports indeed stood still, but who could have imagined it ever would?
Sports is synonymous with America. America often depends on its sports. After what happened, it was not surprising to see our nation’s athletes take time off.
We, as Americans, depend on our athletic teams to bring us joy and a sense of hope. When they win, we feel good. When they lose, we feel their pain. But when we have no teams to root for, we feel empty, without any sense of right or wrong, good or bad.
That’s why the tragic events of Sept. 11 will haunt us forever — not just because of the lives they took, but because of the frame of mind they put us all in.
Not since World War II has baseball ever seen any kind of stoppage of play that wasn’t related to a labor strife. Football has never stopped play, even when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Heck, even hockey, considered Canada’s national pastime, decided it would do the right thing and cancel its games for the week.
Can it be called the right thing? Was it wise for professional and collegiate athletics to stop play, especially when we needed them the most?
Plain and simple, yes. In fact, it was the only option.
Athletes are not gods. We regard them as though they are, just because they can hit a baseball 450 feet, or shoot a hockey puck at 95 mph. Unfortunately for those of us who watch games regularly, athletes are regular people. They have the same feelings and emotions as the rest of us. For that reason alone, sports needed to take a step back and reflect.
The athletes felt just as much grief and disillusionment as the rest of us that fateful day.
Some had families affected by one of the tragic accidents. The Los Angeles Kings even had two scouts on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center towers.
Athletes’ minds were not in the right place, nor should they have been after the attack. Could anyone have imagined Derek Jeter stepping onto the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium, knowing there were still people trapped in the rubble only miles away?
I couldn’t and don’t even want to. But those in Afghanistan and other countries harboring terrorists seem to think we should be afraid to resume daily life.
Now, two weeks later, sports is back online. The Mariners are getting closer to the playoffs, the Seahawks are beginning the season and our own Ducks have already used some of the magic to help us forget about that tragic day. It’s what we all need.
The most important thing for this country is not the retaliation our military forces partake in, or what other actions President Bush will take to help alleviate the problems of terrorism. What is most important for the 45,000 people who regularly attend baseball games at SAFECO Field is to know that our sports teams care. When we walk into that stadium, we’re all one country and only sports can truly bring us together.
Sports has stood the test of time. Nothing can change that. No one single person can take that away from us. No incidents can do so either. Sports is what’s right with America.
That’s why I’m reminded of a line from “Field of Dreams.”
“The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh people will come, people will most definitely come.”
Indeed we will, and in the process, let the rest of the world know what we are all about.