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From Ground Zero |
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HBO film portrays baseball
as relief to 9/11 tragedy
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
It hangs over New York City like a dark, endless cloud,
more prevalent on certain days, less noticeable on others. Always
there.
That is the constant emotions of 9/11, the day the country changed
forever. We were attacked by enemies of the state, fanatics using
religion as an excuse for battering America and ending the lives
of innocent men, women and children of all countries and all
creeds.
Every so often, a new alert is offered up as terror tactics by
our own leaders. The bad guys are after the Wall Street buildings
or a bank in New Jersey or a San Francisco financial center or
a Las Vegas strip.
Change the alert color. Frighten more people. Get more neurotics
adding more medicine. Watch your neighbors more carefully. Pull
in a few dark-eyed, dark-haired bearded alleged clerics.
I went to a preview movie the other day. All of 9/11 came rushing
back. The America we once knew, that free-wheeling, lovely, laughing
jewel of a land no longer exists. A terrorist target. That’s
what they tell us we are with the latest reports from a dozen
locations.
The movie is called “Nine Innings From Ground Zero”
and it was produced by HBO and will be shown across the country
starting Sept. 14. (Check your local television listings for
time.)
This film captures the sense, the sound and the sites of New
York City on that dreadful day almost three years ago while being
wrapped, not in the American flag, but in the Great American
Pastime, baseball.
The film shows the days after the attack and how the country
halted for a breath. Then a baseball team, the New York Yankees,
of course, helped pull it all together with a World Series against
the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Arizona won the World Series as they should. That was not important.
What mattered was that it was played. That attention turned from
identifying burned bodies to baseball.
America moved on, concentrating on one of our October rituals,
the World Series, where farmer’s sons and truck driver’s
kids and laborers from every section of the country gather to
offer their athletic skills for our enjoyment.
There are certain orders of experience in all our lives, the
celebration of the Fourth of July, the kids home from school
for the summer, the first New England chill, the holiday season
of Thanksgiving and Christmas and the annual adventure of sports
events, the Super Bowl, the NCAA March Madness, the October parade
into a World Series trophy day.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rallied the troops
on the bitter hours and days after 9/11 and he is one of the
focal figures of this stirring documentary. The pictures are
all there, the anguish and the horror of 9/11 and the talking
heads parade across the screen to relive the saddest of American
experiences.
There is some baseball in the film but there are also unspectacular
human beings. It is about us, all the people, the adults, the
kids, the wives, the husbands, all bonded by this ghastly event.
One youngster lost her father, the pilot of one of the hijacked
planes, and she stayed strong throughout the ordeal. Then she
wrote a letter to New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter and
asked for his autograph, a symbol of life moving forward, children
still linked to their sports heroes.
Jeter, one of those exceptional human beings with talent and
heart, responded with an invitation to Yankee Stadium. The child
and her family were Jeter’s guests and the joy on that child’s
face was precious.
Life isn’t always about terror attacks and wars and casualty
figures from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is sometimes about small
kindnesses, about pausing to recognize another human being, about
caring.
There is one touching scene in the film when the New York Yankees
visit a family center where depressed relatives seek out information
on their lost loved ones.
Bernie Williams, a gentle Yankee outfielder, said he did not
know what to do as he walked among these grieving people. So
he simply resorted to his own style, reaching out, hugging a
woman in pain, patting her back, offering up the human connection
in that most trying of times.
The film interlocks the events of 9/11 and the aftermath with
the playing of baseball, the World Series challenge, and the
connection between the fright of 9/11 and the faith in the future.
It is almost three years from that date when the country was
attacked, when America stood still, when the realities of fanaticism
impacted on all of us from sea to shining sea.
The color alerts come and go. The targets of hatred change from
day to day. We march through our lives with a little backwards
look at some possible enemy, some crazed freak, some attempt
on disrupting our cherished freedoms.
Baseball goes on. The Yankees will probably be back in the World
Series. We cling as close as possible to normal American rituals.
“Nine Innings From Ground Zero” is worth your time.
We sing out, “America the beautiful.” We cherish our
rituals. We move forward in freedom and a little fear.
©2004 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The "Nine Innings From Ground Zero"
logo is courtesy of HBO.
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