Long Shot (43 page)

For that matter, there was nothing humorous about the way the Mets’ season was going, either. At the break, we were in fourth place and the Braves had finally found their groove to nearly catch the Phillies.

We continued to flounder, reaching our low point—fourteen games under .500—in Los Angeles on August 17. But we won the next two in Los Angeles, the first two back home against Colorado, and then, who can explain it? How can a team playing so badly all year start playing so well all of a sudden?

Over a stretch of twenty-one games, up to September 8, we won seventeen. The next day was a Sunday, and we had a chance to even our record for the first time since the fourth game of the season. Instead, we lost a slugfest in Florida. And on that down note we flew to Pittsburgh, where we’d have Monday off before starting a three-game series with the Pirates on Tuesday.

• • •

Danny came to Pittsburgh, and we met a few of the Mets at a bar to watch the Broncos beat the Giants on Monday Night Football. It was late, for me, when I got back to the Vista Hotel, so I turned off my cell phone and was sleeping hard on Tuesday morning when the room phone rang, which surprised me, because I’d checked in under an alias. When it wouldn’t stop, I finally picked up.

It was Danny, shouting at me: “Turn on the TV!”

“What for?”

“They attacked the World Trade Center!”

“
What? Who
attacked the World Trade Center?”

“The terrorists! They hit us good!
Turn on the TV!
”

He didn’t know yet what had actually happened. We stayed on the line and were both watching when the second plane flew head-on into one of the most famous landmarks in New York City. At that moment we realized, as most Americans did, that life in the world’s greatest country had suddenly, tragically, changed.

We had no idea, however, that Al Qaeda terrorists had also hijacked a plane—United Airlines Flight 93, scheduled from Newark to San Francisco—that was crossing over our heads, eastbound toward Washington, D.C., after being turned around somewhere in Ohio; that four hijackers had taken over the cockpit; that the passengers, learning through phone calls that the World Trade Center and Pentagon had been struck by airplanes, were gathering to overpower the terrorists; that one of the heroes, Todd Beamer, would turn to the others and say, “Let’s roll!” That Flight 93 would crash in a field about eighty miles southeast of us.

As the sickening day developed, there was an emotion inside me that overwhelmed the gloom. I felt rage. There were children on those planes. There were mothers and fathers in those buildings. It was peacetime. It was an unprovoked assault on a nation and system of values that mean everything to me. I was consumed.

I don’t know if it even crossed my mind that we had a ball game that night. As it turned out, we didn’t. The baseball schedule was suspended for the rest of the week. Our focus was getting back to New York; but of course, all flights were canceled. In the meantime, the Mets, afraid that Pittsburgh might be targeted, moved us to a motor inn outside the city.

The next day, we climbed into two buses for the ride back. Somebody put on a Jim Carrey movie—
Me, Myself & Irene
—thinking that maybe it would break the spell, but nobody was up to comedy. We switched to
The Cider House Rules
, but shut it off as soon as the New York skyline came into view, approaching midnight. We were still in New Jersey, on Interstate 78. After staring at pictures of the Twin Towers for two days, like everybody else, we knew generally what to expect; but even so, it was a shocking, chilling, numbing sight. All we saw was smoke and floodlights. I don’t think there was a human sound on our bus. Nothing to say.

Jay Payton lived in the city and offered me a ride to my condo in Gramercy Park. We were stopped a couple of times at police checkpoints.
As we proceeded on slowly and gawked, the sound track was provided by the military aircraft buzzing overhead. We crossed into Manhattan over the Triborough Bridge, which, like all the others, was unlit. The stench was dreadful. This wasn’t the America that I’d grown up in. We’d been invaded.

My condo was about eight or ten blocks from the cordoned-off area surrounding Ground Zero. I can’t say that I was unafraid as we pulled up to it. The atmosphere was still too warlike to feel completely out of danger. As I shut the passenger door to Jay’s car and stepped onto the sidewalk, there was, at least, some welcome familiarity in the sight of my building, intact. Everything else was disconcertingly different—the smoke, the smell, the constant wail of sirens. And most of all, the view. When I’d last stood in that spot, I’d been able to see the World Trade Center. In its place was the grisly spectacle of nothing at all, floodlit.

Over the rest of the week, police officers whom we knew from the ballpark picked up groups of Mets players every day and ushered us around the hospitals to visit firefighters, cops, and ordinary citizens who had been injured or suffered losses in the tragedy. I heard stories of people receiving calls from loved ones who were trapped inside the World Trade Center and knew they’d never make it out. An injured policeman, one of the last people out of the second tower, described to me, with a glazed look on his face, what it was like running down the stairs after the building had been hit, fully aware that it was going to collapse. I talked to a woman who had lost both of her sons.

My friend John Bruno came over to my apartment and we sat on the terrace sniffing death. I know that sounds melodramatic, but that’s the only way I can describe the sensation of that first week or two in lower Manhattan. It smelled like death. I can still hear John saying in a matter-of-fact tone, as he gazed out at the scene, “They fucking got us.”

The parking lot at Shea Stadium became a staging area for supplies, bottled water, you name it. The players and Bobby, too, helped load the vans and trucks headed to the city. Cots were set up in the tunnels for firefighters and workers who needed breaks. We invited them onto the field to take some swings with us. Our police buddies were in and out, and they drove several of us down to Ground Zero, where we walked through the security area just shaking hands with the cops and thanking them for risking their lives and saving other people’s. Being at the scene of the catastrophe, breathing in that wretched odor and smoke, brought on a smothering sense of helplessness. The Mets called a meeting for the players and some front-office employees, just to talk things through. It was one of the few times we saw Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday in the same room. They encouraged us
to pitch in with the recovery, but didn’t mandate it. In a players-only vote, we decided that everybody would donate a day’s pay to the recovery effort.

On Monday, September 17, we were back in Pittsburgh, picking up the season where it left off. The Pittsburgh fans gave us a reception unlike any we’d ever experienced on the road. They were cheering for
New York
, and by extension, for America. In effect, the Mets—like the Yankees, no doubt—were representing the country. It was inspiring. Wearing the caps of the New York police and fire departments, we swept the Pirates.

After a day off, we were back at Shea to play the Braves. Friday’s game would be New York’s first professional sporting event since the city had been attacked.

• • •

Forty-one thousand people came to watch us play baseball on September 21, 2011. Can you imagine that? It was only ten days since dedicated terrorists had committed mass murder in Manhattan. The pall was a long, long way from being lifted. A crowded stadium was an obvious target. There were reports that a man had been found sitting in his car with ominously highlighted maps of the area surrounding Shea and LaGuardia Airport.

And yet, they came. They came to say they weren’t afraid. They came to support and celebrate New York City. That’s what the Mets stood for, whether we wanted to or not, on the night of September 21. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so determined, so compelled, so
duty-bound
to win a baseball game.

Nobody knew what to expect, except that the evening would involve police officers, firefighters, a twenty-one-gun salute, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, and unbridled emotions. Tears. I should have anticipated the tears. I was welling up as soon as I heard the first blast of bagpipes just before the game. Then forty-one thousand fans joined Marc Anthony in singing the national anthem. It was remarkable. When it was over, the stadium rocked with chants of “USA! USA! USA!” It gave me goose bumps. It
still
does.

Typically, high emotions are not of much benefit to a ballplayer. The game demands a cool head and an even keel. When strong feelings engulf you as they did that night, they have to be dealt with. I tried to reason with myself that it was still about catching the ball and swinging the bat. I also prayed. It’s not unusual for me to pray, but it was unusual for me to pray about a baseball game. I said, Lord, please help me get through this night.

Bruce Chen was pitching for us, Jason Marquis—a New Yorker—for Atlanta. The game was scoreless until I dropped a throw in the fourth inning
trying to tag Chipper Jones after a double by Ken Caminiti. I atoned, somewhat, in the bottom of the inning when I doubled, went to third on a single by Ventura, and scored on a fly ball from Tsuyoshi Shinjo.

It was still 1–1 when Diana Ross irrigated about eighty-two thousand eyes during the seventh-inning stretch, joining a local gospel choir for “God Bless America.” Liza Minnelli followed with “New York, New York,” legs kicking, arm in arm with cops and firefighters. We
had
to win that ball game.

As unique as the setting was, the situation, in baseball terms, was really not. Over the years, there had been countless times when we absolutely had to beat the Atlanta Braves. On those occasions, we almost never did. Believe me, we were well aware of that when Brian Jordan put them ahead again in the top of the eighth with a double against John Franco, who was New York through and through. I had one more shot.

It would come in the bottom of the inning. With one out and Steve Karsay pitching for the Braves—a Queens guy, Karsay, like Franco, was obviously pumped up—Fonzi worked a three-two walk. Karsay had also gone to three and two on Matt Lawton, so I figured there was a pretty good chance that he’d miss his spot and give me something to hit. And it would be a fastball, because he had a good one.

He was throwing pellets, and the first one was right there for me. I took it for a strike and didn’t know why I did. As the ball slapped into Javy Lopez’s mitt, I thought,
man
, that was the one. Then, ahead in the count, Karsay brought it. And I, by the grace of God, squared it up.

I caught that fastball with the full force of my emotional rush. When it cleared the fence just left of center and caromed off a distant TV camera, I thought the stadium would crumble into rubble. It was a moment for New Yorkers—the Americans on hand—to let it all out at last, whatever they felt. To scream, to cheer, to chant, to hug, to cry, to jump up and down in celebration of something happy again, something normal and familiar and fun again; of getting their lives back, at least in some small way. Franco said the hair was standing up on his arms.

Benitez set the Braves down in the ninth, and we’d done it, 3–2. Like I said, we
had
to.

I mean, are you kidding? Really. What an emotional time. It was hard to be normal in New York, when you saw those posters everywhere, all the reminders of the tragedy. Not only was it the first game back in New York after nine-eleven, but it’s against your rival, the great Atlanta Braves, and who better to win the game than
our star, and the way he did it? Listening later to the Braves’ comments—Chipper Jones, Bobby Cox—they all said that, if there was one night they had to lose, that was the night.

—Al Leiter

At the time, it didn’t hit me that the home run would become an iconic event in the annals of New York sports. It was ultimately voted by fans as one of the top three moments in Shea Stadium history, along with game six of the 1986 World Series and game five of the 1969 Series. But as I was circling the bases, and after Benitez did his job in the ninth, all I knew was that it felt indescribably, overwhelmingly
good.

I’d done something for the city—not enough, but
something
—and I’d done it in my own particular way. I had channeled my anger and fought back, just a little, with my weapon of choice. I savor that. I take professional satisfaction in the fact that I was able to come through at a time when I was needed, and personal satisfaction in the afterglow of that extraordinary night. I never imagined that a home run—much less a
regular season
home run, with no obvious ramifications in terms of the pennant—could resonate so far beyond the boundaries of baseball. Even now, I never get tired of people approaching me to say how much that home run meant to them. It still stirs my emotions. It still makes me proud.

When I saw Karsay a few years later, we didn’t talk about the 0–1 pitch in the eighth inning of September 21, 2001. That’s a touchy-feely thing for ballplayers. But by the handshake, and by the smile, it was clear that there was a common understanding. We knew what we shared.

In return for me not mentioning the home run, he was kind enough not to bring up the rest of the season.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The energy of that extraordinary night carried us for nearly another week. We won the Atlanta series, then swept the Expos in Montreal. With that, we were 25–6 since bottoming out in Los Angeles in August. Somehow, we had closed to within three games of first place—of the Braves, that is, since they had passed the Phillies—with nine more to play.

The first three of those came, of course, in Atlanta. We lost the series opener but were looking good late in the second game. I’d cleared the bases with a double, and when Leiter completed the eighth inning, we led 5–1. Benitez started the ninth, but with two outs, two on, and the score now 5–4, he gave way to Franco. Johnny walked Marcus Giles to load the bases, and then Brian Jordan—that guy
killed
us—unloaded them with a grand slam.