{"id":843689,"date":"2026-09-11T04:02:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T04:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/843689\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T04:02:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T04:02:25","slug":"the-mets-have-not-forgotten-25-years-later-the-team-has-kept-its-9-11-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/843689\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Mets have not forgotten\u2019 \u2013 25 years later, the team has kept its 9\/11 promise"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 In the summer of 2001, a month or two before everything changed, Robin Ventura played golf with a man named Chris Quackenbush<\/a>. Soon after, Quackenbush came to a game to see his friend, Bobby Valentine, the New York Mets\u2019 manager. Ventura recognized him during batting practice and said hello.<\/p>\n

That was that, or it would have been, if not for what happened. And when it did, Ventura remembered the conversation and how it made him feel \u2014 not as a veteran ballplayer, but as a young father. He will never forget.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis son kept looking at him,\u201d Ventura said by phone last week, \u201cand he had this look of admiration towards his dad, like, \u2018This is so great.\u2019 He just couldn\u2019t believe he was down on the field. And I\u2019d had my son probably three years before and I remember thinking, \u2018Gosh, it would be so great to \u2014\u2019 I don\u2019t know. You kind of want your kids to look at you like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when it happened, and he was there and didn\u2019t make it, it just \u2014 I do go back and look when I go down there and go to the pools, and I find his name. And I don\u2019t know why, but I just remember that moment of thinking of his son, what he\u2019s going to miss, and what Chris is going to miss. It\u2019s a tough thing. You\u2019re going back to how insignificant you are at that moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the things that stick with you, that baseball, yeah, it could be kind of a good thing to come back and play, get people to cheer, laugh maybe, something like that. But in the end, you don\u2019t know how much it helped or didn\u2019t help. You feel a little overwhelmed by all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ventura is 59 years old now. His hair is gray, his children are grown. He helps coach the baseball team at Oklahoma State, his alma mater. It\u2019s been a decade since he managed the Chicago White Sox, more than two since he last played in the majors. His Mets career was over by the end of 2001, with a trade across town to the Yankees.<\/p>\n

Yet there was Ventura in Manhattan this week, with his old Mets teammates, on another brilliant Tuesday morning in the sweet spot between summer heat and autumn chill. For all of the franchise\u2019s misadventures, the Mets \u2014 led by ones who were there for that sad September \u2014 get this right.<\/p>\n

They meet annually at a firehouse, this time Ladder 25\/Division 3\/Collapse Rescue 1 on West 77th St. A mural at the bottom of the stairs honors seven members who answered a call from there and never returned. The players are not the stars of this reunion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the greatest rescue in the history of the fire department,\u201d said Capt. Daniel Donleavy. \u201cPeople will talk about everyone that died. What about the people that we saved, with the police officers? Telling people to run, move, get out of the building?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mets were in Pittsburgh when it happened, a veteran team with a losing record, finally mounting a late charge. They would come together in more meaningful ways, finding a shared purpose in their anger, fear and grief. John Franco calls that team \u201ca band of brothers\u201d now, and he showed up on Tuesday, too, with Al Leiter, Todd Zeile and David Wright.<\/p>\n

Wright was just 17 years old on 9\/11, newly drafted and about to head to Florida for his first instructional league. He would soon play with Franco, Leiter and Zeile, who instilled in him the extra responsibility that comes with being a Met. The heroes of 9\/11 can never be far from mind, they would tell him. This is a forever commitment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Robin Ventura reflects upon the mural of the seven firefighters from FDNY\u2019s Ladder Co. 25 who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. (Tyler Kepner \/ The Athletic)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have vowed as a fire department to never forget \u2014 never forget our folks, never forget what they did that day and the impact they had and the lives that they saved,\u201d said John Esposito, the Chief of Department for the FDNY. \u201cAnd 25 years later, the Mets have not forgotten. They\u2019re still out supporting us and doing the right thing. They could have done something simple for a couple of years and then just moved on. But they\u2019re with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mets, of course, are not alone in their ongoing outreach to the New York Fire Department, which lost 343 members on Sept. 11 and more than 600 members since then due to 9\/11-related causes. The Yankees, who host the Mets this weekend in the Bronx, made four firehouse visits last month and have extensive, ongoing community involvement.<\/p>\n

The Yankees reached the World Series in 2001, losing Game 7 on a ninth-inning comeback by the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was an inspiring run with an ending that somehow fit the time: imperfect, and a stark reminder that baseball can only do so much.<\/p>\n

The Mets\u2019 connection was always bound to be different. Shea Stadium served as a staging area for relief supplies in the days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The team hosted the first New York sporting event on Sept. 21, punctuated by Mike Piazza\u2019s cathartic home run to beat the Atlanta Braves.<\/p>\n

Franco was a son of Staten Island, Leiter of New Jersey, Valentine of Connecticut. Rusty Staub, a Mets Hall of Famer, founded a charity in 1985 for families of fallen police officers and firefighters. Staub died in 2018, but the program lives on as \u201cAnswer the Call,\u201d<\/a> which distributed more than $7.75 million to more than 500 families last year.<\/p>\n

The culture of the Mets, then, was deeply entwined with the city. And from the moment they saw the ghostly smoke of Ground Zero through the bus windows on their ride home from Pittsburgh, the players understood the mission. Instinctively, they grasped how to navigate a heartbreaking landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve continued all along,\u201d said Carol Gies, whose husband, Lt. Ronnie E. Gies, died at the World Trade Center. \u201cI\u2019ve done many, many things with them over the years, and they always embrace it, and they want that story to be told, not just on behalf of them, but on behalf of everybody else involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful organization, it really is, and there\u2019s no words to put it for how much love and respect I have for Jay Horwitz. He\u2019s a true friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Carol<\/p>\n

\n Carol Gies (right) and her son, Ronnie Jr. (left), were in attendance when the Mets returned to Shea Stadium on Sept. 21, 2001, 10 days after FDNY Lt. Ronnie E. Gies died at the World Trade Center. (Ezra Shaw \/ ALLSPORT)<\/p>\n

Horwitz was into his third decade as the Mets\u2019 public relations director in 2001. The team has been his family for nearly 50 years. He called his memoir \u201cMr. Met,\u201d but Horwitz is less a mascot and more, you might say, a Met\u2019s best friend: unwaveringly loyal, completely guileless. To know him is to trust him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe glue, then and now, is Jay Horwitz,\u201d Valentine said. \u201cJay could say, \u2018Okay, you could go to Brooklyn and knock on the door of the Smith house and the people that answer are big baseball fans.\u2019 Or, \u2018You could go to this picnic because a lot of the firemen\u2019s families will be there.\u2019 He\u2019s the event planner. He felt that this was his calling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horwitz, 81, is now the vice president for alumni relations, indefatigable in that role but no longer embedded daily with the current roster. His institutional knowledge has helped sustain the Mets\u2019 efforts with the FDNY.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that continues now that Jay\u2019s not kind of there on a daily basis,\u201d Wright said. \u201cI hope it continues to the younger players. Because a lot of the younger guys now aren\u2019t even alive during 9\/11. But I hope they get talked to by somebody that, hey, let\u2019s thank these men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Cashman, a special assistant to the FDNY commissioner, has decades of Mets memories to share: Tom Seaver getting laughs by teasing a Yankees fan; a sheepish Zack Wheeler asking to stay for lunch; R.A. Dickey teaching the knuckleball with a game of catch on the street. The tradition has continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a thing with Juan Soto last year,\u201d Cashman said. \u201cWhat a gentleman. And I was talking to him before and I said, \u2018OK, the commissioner\u2019s going to introduce you and you can say a few words.\u2019 I didn\u2019t think he would really say anything \u2014 \u2018hey, hello\u2019 \u2014 but he gave a little talk about 9\/11 and the firefighters. I was so impressed. You could see he was really into being there in the firehouse. It meant a lot to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Firefighters are often a child\u2019s first heroes; before they even know about professional athletes, toddlers can recognize the valor in saving lives. When you grow up to do it, said Esposito, you feel privileged. A sign in the call center at Ladder 25 shows the Statue of Liberty beside the words: \u201cFDNY: Still The Greatest Job On Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if firefighters had a second career choice, Esposito said, many would want to be ballplayers. There is a natural kinship: camaraderie in close quarters, the physical and mental effort, the stories of overcoming challenges. At times, Esposito said, ballplayers and firefighters look at each other in awe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to pay my respects, and I like to say thank you,\u201d Wright said. \u201cMore importantly, I just like to kind of hang out and hear their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stories of 9\/11, and the heroes who never came home, are embedded in the soul of the city. The Mets do what they can. They listen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the fire department, once you get to the end of August and the beginning of September, everybody, especially those of us that were here 25 years ago, you get a little on edge and a little anxiety goes up,\u201d Esposito said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you walk into the firehouse and you\u2019ve got Al Leiter or David Wright or any of these guys standing there, and they\u2019re just, \u2018Hey, how are you doing?\u2019 and you have a nice conversation. They\u2019re not acting like big shots. They\u2019re just normal folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correction: An earlier version of this story used the incorrect acronym NYFD to refer to the Fire Department of New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 In the summer of 2001, a month or two before everything changed, Robin Ventura played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,1189,99],"class_list":["post-843689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}