Top 100 momentsNo. 93
The night baseball came back
Mike Piazza’s homer at Shea, ten days after September 11. Sport’s job, for one evening, is to be a place a city can sit together.
The leagues stopped. When baseball returns in New York, Shea Stadium is a security line and a prayer. The Mets trail the Braves. Mike Piazza hits one into the night. The building, which had been holding its breath, lets it go.
It is not the most important thing that happened that month. It is the most important thing sport could do: a crowd, a ballpark, a game that was allowed to matter for three hours.
Later ceremonies will get bigger and more produced. This one still feels like a city trying the idea of normal and finding, briefly, that it fit.