Baseball was exactly what the country needed after 9/11

TAMPA, Fla. — The New York Yankees know how to do monuments. From the boss, George Steinbrenner, to the rows of retired numbers with a who’s who of some of the greatest to ever play the game, the walk into Steinbrenner Field is ensconced in reverence. But none more poignant than the 9/11 memorial.

Former New York Yankee and Tampa native Tino Martinez proudly wore the pinstripes, and he’s proud of his former team’s tribute with the replica twin towers that stand on a base shaped in a pentagon, surrounded by grass that represents the field where Flight 93 crashed.

“I remember it vividly. Everything,” Tino said.

Like many Americans, Tino remembers exactly where he was when the country was attacked. It was the morning after a rained out Yankee game. In his Manhattan apartment, with a view of the Twin Towers, Tino was awakened to the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

“It was very, very surreal what was going on,” he said. “Nobody really knew what was happening at that time. So we were locked in the city. The bridges were closed and we just kind of hung around the city all day kind of like everyone else, not really what’s going on.”

Baseball was on hold. The country was on hold. In the smoldering wreckage, first responders dug through rubble in desperate searches for survivors. While the rest of the country searched for solace. A week after the attacks, baseball resumed.

“We didn’t know if we should be playing baseball or not,” Tino said. “But we did know it was the right thing when the whole stadium is sold out and everywhere you go, the people are telling you, ‘Hey, we love watching you guys play. You’re our comfort and relief for a couple of hours a day.’”

The Yankees first game back was on the road against the Chicago White Sox. When they returned from the road trip, Tino and his teammate Derek Jeter paid a visit to a New York Fire Department. They learned how much their games were helping. And that was evident when the Yankees won another pennant and played the Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series. After losing the first two games, the Yankees came home for Game 3. President George Bush threw out the first pitch, a strike.

In Game 4, in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, Tino hit the game-tying home run that helped his team secure the win and even the series. The Yankees would go on to lose the series in seven games. But what they did on the field was bigger than the game.

“We needed that badly,” Tino said. “To see the fans, every single game at Yankee Stadum and all the other stadiums around the country filled up, it was a positive moment as far as getting back on track.”

There is before 9/11. And after. In those weeks after the attacks, we were a wounded nation. Baseball helped us heal.

“Getting baseball going helped a lot of people around the country think OK, we’re getting slowly back to normal,” he said. “Football season started and then everything started coming around. And thank God, here we are.”