Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES, CA — Baseball for many is literally an escape from reality. In the middle of a bustling city, you go to a vast expanse of green for a few hours and watch the world’s greatest athletes chase a ball around a field. And in a place like the gorgeous Dodger Stadium, the setting sun, the mountain views, and the camaraderie of the fans just adds to that experience. But for about a week in 2001, that escape was ripped away from us in the most brutal of ways.
It took a while for people to recover from that gut punch, but especially here on the the West Coast, where we hadn’t been directly impacted by any of the terrorist attacks, there wasn’t much to do, but try to go on with our lives as best we could. In my own case, my first venturing out was a trip to the Hollywood Bowl for its annual “Movie Night” on September 21 of that year. The crowd singing the national anthem with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra playing the tune had never been so meaningful.
We all know the fabled story of the Mets game in New York that happened coincidentally on that same night I was at the Bowl. The story of former Dodger Mike Piazza‘s emotional 8th-inning homer to win it for the Mets is by now the stuff of legend. However, it’s important to note that the Mets were in Pittsburgh playing an out-of-town series with the Pirates on the day baseball actually returned to America a few days earlier on Sept. 17, 2001. And on that same night the other side of the continent, the Los Angeles Dodgers resumed their schedule as well. And who better to bring us back to a sense of normalcy and decency in a world gone mad than the legend himself.
Vin’s message
The evening started, as most Dodger games on TV did in those days, with a greeting from play-by-play man Vin Scully. In a completely improvised message, Scully spoke from the heart and met the moment beautifully.
“The President of the United States has said it is time to go back to work,” Scully said. “And so, despite a heavy heart, baseball gets up out of the dirt, brushes itself off, and will follow his command, hoping in some small way to inspire the nation to do the same.”
Years later, reflecting on that evening, Scully told the LA Daily News that he considered it a feat to say anything, much less the eloquent statement that he ended up making.
“The tough one was that first one,” Scully said. “It was totally ad-lib. I was as badly shaken up as anybody else and yet I had to do something on camera. That was very hard.”
Chills from the pre-game ceremony
With Vin still narrating, the pre-game ceremony began. First, two officers from the LAPD were awarded the Medal of Valor for bravery by then Chief of Police Bernard Parks. The Dodgers and Padres then emerged from their dugouts, joined in the applause and then headed to the center field plaza area, where a huge U.S. flag was about to be unfurled. As officer Rosalind Ilams of the LAPD sang “God Bless America,” the ballplayers and member of the Los Angeles Fire Department separated until the giant flag nearly covered the entire outfield.
At the time, Dodger star Shawn Green was moved by the the entire ceremony. “To be hand-in-hand with firemen pulling the flag was probably an incredible thing for people in the stands to see, but to be out there in the field with them was awesome,” Green said. “Those are the real heroes.”
Padres got the better of LA that night
In addition to Green, Dodger broadcaster Eric Karros was in the lineup that night. So were future managers Alex Cora and Phil Nevin, as well as future Hall of Famers Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson, Trevor Hoffman, and (hopefully) Adrian Beltre.
The game that followed the opening ceremony was almost an afterthought. On that day, Kevin Brown was on the mound for the Dodgers and rookie Jason Middlebrook made his big league debut for the Padres. In this one, Middlebrook got the better of the veteran Brown and gave up only one run over six innings of work. The Padres would go on to beat the Dodgers 6-4, thanks to a big inning off reliever Chan Ho Park. At the time, Middlebrook was well aware of the import of having one’s debut fall on such a day.
“I’ll forever remember it, not just because it was my first, but because of what happened,” he said on that night. “That’s something I’ll probably always tell my kids.”
Indeed, Middlebrook would go on to pitch in only 24 big-league ballgames in his career, so certainly that sentiment must be much more true in retrospect than it even was at the time.
Baseball was back
2001 was a forgettable year for manager Jim Tracy and the Dodgers. They finished 86-76 and missed the playoffs. They ended the season in third place, six games behind the eventual World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks. But for that night at least, the Dodgers gave the city of Los Angeles a memory to last a lifetime.
So much has happened since 9/11. So many missteps, miscalculations, and missed opportunities have in some ways diminished the truth about those days in its immediate aftermath. But regardless of what happened in the intervening years, on that day at least, the whole country got out of the dirt, brushed itself off, and got on with the business of living.
And for that at least we owe baseball a debt of gratitude.
