CHICAGO -- On Sept. 21, 2001, Joe McEwing pinch-hit and fouled out in the bottom of the seventh for the New York Mets during a 3-2 victory over the Braves before 41,235 at Shea Stadium.
The victory moved the Mets to 75-73. The nuts and bolts of the win, aside from Mike Piazza’s game-winning home run in the bottom of the eighth, really weren’t the focus on the night.
This contest marked the first in New York since the atrocities of 9/11 took place. Twenty years later, the current White Sox third-base coach still understands and cherishes the small bit of comfort baseball was able to provide.
“We had the ability to play the game and take the thoughts off their minds for possibly three hours,” McEwing told MLB.com. “Put smiles and joy into some people’s lives that have been affected and devestated by it. Very humble to be able to be part of that healing.
“There’s nothing that goes through a daily day that you are not reminded about it in one way or another. That mental thought process is with you every day, what occurred and what happened. Your thoughts and prayers still go out every day to everyone who was lost. Everyone who was affected by it. It changed the world on that particular day for the rest of our lives.”
McEwing and his Mets teammates were part of the crew operating out of Shea Stadium, which was used as a sort of relief center. The team would work out for a few hours in the morning and then worked six or seven hours per day packing the tractor trailers with supplies to take to Ground Zero to help with water, food, boots, socks and basically all the things necessary for the workers to be able to work for long periods of time.
But he also vividly remembers the first look at New York after busing back into the city.
“We turned on the [New Jersey] Turnpike and usually, the city that says, 'Come see me, invite you, you are invited'; as it's said, [it's] the city that doesn’t sleep, it’s always vibrant, lit up,” McEwing said. “And to turn on the Turnpike and [there's] maybe three or four cars on the Turnpike. And to look over and see darkness -- you see darkness, and you see clouds and debris and leftover residue.
“It was very eerie. It was an eerie, eerie, eerie feeling. Driving up the Turnpike to go over the [George Washington Bridge] and to see armed forces in front of every toll booth, with tanks out front. You understood that it changed, everything changed.”
The 2001 White Sox were in New York, scheduled to face the Yankees, at the time. The White Sox remembered the countless people affected by that day on Saturday with a moment of silence at Guaranteed Rate Field prior to their game with Boston.
White Sox coach Jerry Narron had become the interim manager for the Rangers on May 4 of that same year and remembers his team staying in San Francisco a few extra days after playing the A’s and before they were scheduled to travel to Seattle. The Rangers, like all others Major League teams, had their season halted before they could make that journey, and of course, not one player complained.
“Everybody was wanting to get home to their families,” Narron said. “Nobody knew what was going to happen. You didn’t know if it was going to go on all over the country or what.”
Although McEwing was with the White Sox on Saturday, he will never lose his strong affinity for New York. He lives with no fear, trying to enjoy every day to the fullest because you never know what can happen. He’ll also never forget the deep meaning of that baseball game at Shea from two decades ago.
“To understand the feeling that you’re playing for so many other things than the name across your chest. You are playing for the country,” McEwing said. “You are playing for New York. You are playing for every firefighter and every paramedic and every armed forces member and every police officer who put their lives out there to keep us safe.
“Nobody worried about individual statistics. You went out and you competed, and you played. It was part of healing, healing the cracks to make them stronger again. It wasn’t just New York. It was across the country that was affected by it. It was an out of body experience, one that brought a team together, a city. There were so many emotions involved.”