To me, the greatest thing about sports is that there's always a next year. No matter how many games a team loses, or how close the players got to a championship, only to see the ultimate prize slip through their fingertips at the final moments, there will always be a next year to come out and try it again.
Unfortunately, in life, it's often much more difficult to look forward to next year - a fact we were all reminded of by the events we as a nation commemorated this past Sunday. A native of the New York metropolitan area, I still can recall the catastrophic Sept. 11 attacks vividly and almost effortlessly. The memories of watching the events unfolding on the television during my sixth grade music class, not being able to fully comprehend what my eyes were seeing, are as clear as if they had happened only yesterday. I can still hear the nervous whispers floating around my classroom as classmates were called down to the office for dismissal: "I wonder if his family is OK." "She didn't know she was getting picked up, something may be wrong." I remember not being allowed out for recess and coming home to spend the day with my family, hovering around the television and calling family and friends to make sure everyone was OK. I can't imagine these images ever leaving my head; they will always be there, a permanent reminder of one of the darkest days in the history of my nation.
And yet, as vivid as these mental pictures are, I realized something strange Sunday morning as I watched the coverage of the memorial services in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. - I can't, for the life of me, remember any feelings from that day. I remember the tears of family members, the cries of friends and the stories of neighbors, but as I sat watching footage from that fateful day, I just couldn't remember how I felt. Looking back, I think the sheer enormity of the situation was simply too much for my 11-year-old brain to comprehend, and it went into shutdown mode. I'm sure I cried, but I don't remember feeling sad. I'm sure I looked up into the sky every time I heard a noise to see if I was in danger, and yet I can't remember being afraid. The first real emotion I remember feeling occurred 10 days later during, of all things, a baseball game.
The first major sporting event in New York City following the attacks was a Major League Baseball game between the Mets and the Braves at Shea Stadium in Flushing, N.Y. - about 10 miles from Ground Zero. Even though the game was crucial to that season's National League pennant race, there was much debate beforehand about whether or not the game should even be played, and when the Mets took the field in the top of the first inning - after an emotional tribute to those who lost their lives 10 days earlier - even those of us watching on television could feel the palpable unrest throughout the stadium. As the game swayed back and forth, it was as if all the fans - both in the stadium and at home - weren't sure how to react. How could we be happy when so recently we had been so sad? Was it right for us to be cheering about something as trivial as a baseball game when just 10 days prior real heroes had lost their lives at the hands of terrorists seeking to destroy all that we as a country hold dear?
Sports, though, can be a funny thing sometimes. It's easily mocked by those who would argue that we as a society place them on a pedestal that they don't deserve. We often treat games as life-or-death struggles, when in reality, as we've learned the hard way, there are truly much more important things. And yet, despite it all, there are nights like Sept. 21, 2001 - when sports transcended mere games. With the Mets trailing in the eighth inning, Mike Piazza hit the greatest home run I have ever seen to give the Mets the lead and the victory, and with it, give New Yorkers a reason to cheer again. Sitting on my family room couch with my family, I remember the feeling of pure bliss as Piazza circled the bases and more than 40,000 screaming fans at Shea Stadium went absolutely crazy. At that moment, when Piazza took his mighty swing and the ball flew through the New York night, it became OK to move on. Life would never be the same, but that didn't mean we couldn't go on and enjoy the future while never forgetting the past. I will always remember that moment and those emotions - jumping around at home, hugging my family and screaming at the television as I watched Piazza touch home plate and the fans wave their American flags and cheer for the home team. Like the Mets that night, we were all down, but that didn't mean we had to be out.
In the years that have followed, I have become acutely more aware of the uniting power of athletic competition. On the international scale, it has the power to stop civil war, like when rebels and the government put down their arms in the Ivory Coast at the behest of national soccer hero Didier Drogba and joined together in singing the national anthem at an African Nations Cup match in 2005. On the local scale, it has the power to unite a town, like how, here in Charlottesville on game days, the entire town ceases day-to-day activities to put on our orange - or ties and pearls - to support our Cavaliers at Scott Stadium. And on the national scale it has the power to heal. When former president George W. Bush took the field at Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch at game three of the 2001 World Series, it was a symbol to the entire nation: We will not be afraid; we will not live our lives in fear. We will go on, and we will be stronger because of it.
After Sept. 11, I learned that both in sports and in life there will always be a next year. Occasionally, it may be a little difficult to see, but as Mike Piazza helped me learn 10 years ago, it's always there - sometimes it just takes a while to find it.
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