The Futility Infielder

One Year Later

I just returned from Tuesday night's Yankees-Orioles ballgame, a mercifully short, virtually split-squad affair for the Yanks. This, the second game of a day-night doubleheader against the Orioles clocked in at 2 hours, 12 minutes and was won by the Yanks 3-1, despite Enrique Wilson and Alex Arias (the middle infield of a future nightmare) batting 1-2 in the lineup. Most of the Yankee payroll--Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jason Giambi, Jorge Posada, and Robin Ventura--rested, and those who played didn't work too many counts; John Vander Wal drew the game's first walk in the bottom of the 7th. Jeff Weaver scattered four hits over 8 innings, retiring 20 out of the last 21 batters (8 4 1 1 0 5) and threw only 102 pitches. Sidney Ponson went the distance for the Orioles, pitching like a man who deserved better than a team that had lost 15 of 16 playing behind him.

A year ago, September 10, 2001, I was at Yankee Stadium, snarfing down soggy hot dogs from under a rickety umbrella during a pregame thunderstorm. That game, against the Red Sox, was rained out before it even started, and my friend Nick and I merely wanted to finish our dinners before disembarking. We ate watching a young woman in a rain-sodden Nomar Garciaparra jersey dance in the six inches of water which accumlated in the front row Yankee Stadium's upper deck. Full of nitrates, I went home to write about Andy Pettitte.

The indelible image of Dancing Nomar Girl came back to mind the next morning, as I was surprised to be greeted by sunshine and clear blue sky leaving my apartment. Heading for the deli just down Second Avenue where I get my coffee, I saw thick, black smoke rising from downtown. In puzzlement, I listened as a man at the deli babbled something about "seeing the second plane hit" while a transistor radio broke news that the World Trade Center was on fire. It was 9:05 AM.

It's been a long year since then. The occasion of this anniversary provides us a moment to pause and remember those who lost their lives, to reflect on our own lives, and hopefully, to offer some closure as well. I was lucky enough not to have any friends or family directly affected by the 9/11 attacks, but everyone I know has been affected on some level. My own response has been to count my blessings on a routine basis, to remind those close to me of their importance in my life, to partake in a markedly more civil city than prior to 9/11, and to make an effort to savor each and every day. It's a simple prescription that has kept me upbeat, busy, and relatively happy in the face of my own anxieties--which, I'll wager, are pretty light compared to what some people in this city have faced.

Besides longer lines and heightened security at the airport, I notice the difference the most at sporting events. My trip to a World Series game (Game 3, the one where G.W. Bush threw out the first pitch) was a paranoid, disorganized fiasco which took two and a half hours to get from the subway entrance to my seat in Yankee Stadium. The Winter Olympics, only five months removed from 9/11, were an adventure in quelling a public's collective anxiety via a rather byzantine (but nonetheless effective) process. Everything since then is a joke, with the Yankees' ham-fistedness towards allowing certain items in the park while cracking down on others (those dangerous umbrellas, opaque plastic bags, and whatever will fit under a baseball cap!).

But what really galls me at Yankee Stadium is the Seventh Inning Stretch. The Yanks' entry in the mandatory patriotism sweepstakes is Kate Smith's war-horse rendition of "God Bless America, which is fine in and of itself. But it's juxtaposed with Eddie Layton's whimsical organ run through "Take Me Out To the Ballgame," which follows a mere 30 seconds later, and the sonic horror of "Cotton-Eyed Joe," which follows that, rendering the summoned patriotism banal and ridiculous.

For reason I've only just begun to fathom, I went to work the morning of September 11 (a more complete acccounting of my day up to a certain point is here). Fifteen minutes of watching the breaking news on CNN (no mention of terrorists yet), half my cup of coffee, and I was out the door, passing ambulances and fire trucks rushing downtown to the scene. No, there was no stopping me; I had appointments, I had deadlines, and I was on autopilot. The stupidity of what I was doing didn't hit me about halfway into my subway ride, when I noticed that several of the women on the train had been crying. People were scared. Why wasn't I?

In the several times I've recounted the day's events--to myself on the printed page or to anybody else who's listened--I've never come up with a satisfactory explanation for why I still went to work. But in retrospect, I think it was just a subconscious way of reminding myself that I was strong enough to keep going, and that my best contribution in the coming days would be to do just that. I had to summon a somewhat clinical resolve in the days shortly after, faced with deadlines for the 2002 World Almanac which involved designing layouts around photos of the tragedy and revising the book's cover (which I'd designed and delivered as final on Monday the 10th) to reflect events. That ordeal I've already written about.

Writing, both for this space and for myself, has helped me immensly in dealing with 9/11. By providing myself with a forum in which I could openly come to terms with it (in however roundabout a way), I allowed myself the space to process the day's events, and found the opportunity to remind myself of how lucky I'd been. I'm grateful for that, as I've been grateful for every single one of the past 365 days. Thank you for tuning in.