Piazza's post-9 11 home run 09 21 2001 New York Mets

Table of Content

• Mets sign Japanese star pitcher to 5-year, $75M deal
• Karsay reflects on role in post-9/11 moment
• Piazza's post-9/11 HR brought 'incredible release of emotion' to NY, nation
• Members of 2001 Mets share their stories during '9/11: The Mets Remember'
• Steve Cohen is on a Mets spending spree
• Mike Piazza’s ‘uncomfortable’ role after post-9/11 home run

"You never like to lose, but that was one that was pretty easy to accept." Diana Ross followed with a gut-wrenching version of "God Bless America." She started out at a mic stand set up behind home plate, facing the crowd. As she powered through the song, she slowly drifted past the four umps, stationed staring out from home plate, and stood halfway between the plate and the pitcher's mound.

Piazza wore a Port Authority Police cap and his helmet was adorned with a NYPD decal that special night when he achieved legendary status. It was a great moment for New York and cemented that game as one of the most memorable in Mets franchise history. It was great theater; better than I had remembered. It was the perfect spark to begin the healing process. Piazza connected in that 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves not far from the Shea Stadium parking lot that served as a relief station for Ground Zero front-line workers and the families of those lost earlier in the catastrophe. While Saturday marks 20 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, another significant anniversary will come 10 days afterward, marking a poignant occasion that took place just miles away from where the Twin Towers once stood.

Mets sign Japanese star pitcher to 5-year, $75M deal

“For me to be at the right place and the right time and to come through I can only think it comes from above and a lot of people that put wind under my wings,’’ Piazza said, words flowing like the emotion of the time. That blast on Sept. 21, 2001 — in the first sporting event in New York following the 9/11 attacks — helped beat the Braves and elevated the All-Star catcher into another realm among NYC sports heroes. Both the New York Mets and the New York Yankees got the OK from Major League Baseball to don commemorative hats to honor 9/11 first responders in their Sept. 11, 2020, games. Major League Baseball had not previously allowed either the Mets or Yankees to wear caps during games featuring the logos of the FDNY, NYPD and other organizations that aided in the effort.

"It was a surreal scene before the game, an emotional tug of war," Piazza says. "And then when the bagpipes came out ... it was really difficult to focus." Eventually Braves outfielder Brian Jordan came over and gave her and the boys each a hug, then pointed a finger at the group of photographers. They didn't listen, and now Gies is glad they didn't.

Karsay reflects on role in post-9/11 moment

He played the majority of his career with Los Angeles and New York, but also had brief stints with the Marlins, Padres and A's. "It was just this incredible release of emotion," Piazza told MLB Network earlier this year. On Sept. 21, 2001, 10 days after the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, Piazza provided a small dose of healing for a city rebounding from tragedy.

The moment on Sept. 21, 2001, when that ball cleared the center-field fence will live forever. It is part of Piazza’s legacy, one magical home run of 427. Piazza debuted in 1992 with the Dodgers, who selected him in the 62nd round of the '88 Draft, and took home National League Rookie of the Year honors in his first full season in '93.

Piazza's post-9/11 HR brought 'incredible release of emotion' to NY, nation

“It’s uncomfortable, at times, when people put me as, for lack of a better word, a hero. "What an amazing life that I've had in baseball," Piazza said after his Hall of Fame announcement. "The memories, to me, I almost can't capture. It's truly a blessing and I'm very, very grateful."

The stream of photos of her and the boys would become iconic symbols of the night. "We just didn't know if we should be there," he says. "To be a professional athlete, you do have to muster up a certain sense of emotion to play with intensity. And at that point, all of our emotion was drained." Throw in that the Mets had closed to within 4½ games of the Braves and there were real pennant stakes to the game, and Piazza was afraid he wouldn't even be able to function that night. Part of our recovery is to suppress certain feelings and emotions.

By the 7th-inning stretch, when Liza Minnelli belted out a rousing rendition of “New York, New York,” the crowd was raucous. His eyes welled, his bottom lip quivered, as he fought tears. It was a stirring show of compassion for a city that had always treated him as the enemy. I became a Chipper Jones fan in that moment. But I’ll never forget the face of Braves third baseman Chipper Jones. Like most Met fans, I hated this cocky future Hall of Famer and inveterate Met killer.

It’s part of the continued process of healing and people want to relate to it and I enjoy it. Every now and then someone sees me in an airport and comes up and wants to talk about it. I feel a responsibility to try to just continue to console them.

Steve Cohen is on a Mets spending spree

He enjoyed so much success at Shea that he named one of his sons after the ballpark. Such weighty thoughts had never entered my mind before something as trivial as a ballgame before. I’d been to some big games, even historic World Series classics. But nothing prepared me for what I was about to experience, and no game etched itself deeper into my memory before or since.

He'd stand and look back at her, and they'd both raise a hand. It was a half-wave, half-long-distance air hand-hold. "That probably looked very silly to anybody who saw it," she says. “I have been blessed to have some home runs and some big home runs,” Piazza said Saturday before the Mets and Yankees played at Citi Field, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

"I felt myself starting to break down. I didn't really know if I could finish the game. Fortunately, as everything unfolded, I did receive emotional strength from everyone, and the old feelings of competitiveness kicked in." The New York Yankees played their first home game following the 9/11 attacks on Sept. 25 of the 2001 season and lost to Tampa Bay, 4-0. The World Series-bound Yankees clinched their fourth straight division title, though, when Boston lost to Baltimore earlier that day. "It'll be a hard day for us on Sept. 11 of this year, for sure," Gies says, before reflecting on the game that helped her family heal. "But I'll also spend some time just feeling grateful for that night, and for that Mike Piazza home run. Everything changed for us when he hit that ball. We could smile again."

The cheers began to build, as another solemn march formed — dozens of firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and other civil-servant heroes of the city, taking their places next to the sailors to lay their hands on Old Glory. "Should we be here? Is it too soon? We had a lot of trepidation, we had a lot of anxiety," Mets’ catcher Mike Piazza told WCBS this week. "Terrorism was still prevalent in our minds, was still on our thoughts. A lot of the fear of the unknown. We didn't know what was gonna happen, we didn't know what the feeling would be." The Atlanta Braves 2001 roster included future Hall of Fame inductees Bobby Cox , Chipper Jones, Greg Maddox, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, who also pitched for the Mets later in his 300-win career. "I didn't want to see that jersey leave New York," Scaramucci says. Karsay threw hard, and opened with a fastball down the middle for a called strike.

The Mets were losing when Piazza stepped up to the plate at the bottom of the eighth. There was a runner on base and the normal pressures of baseball seemed insignificant to the pressure of giving New Yorkers something to distract themselves with. Major League Baseball had canceled all its games for a week after 9/11. Play would resume but the Mets would not return to Shea Stadium until Sept. 21.