One Eye on Field And One on Sky

Johnette Howard

September 16, 2001

THE METS have followed the gruesome stories and mounting toll of Tuesday's plane hijackings and terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as closely as anyone. But as the Mets drove into the parking lot at Shea Stadium yesterday to get back to work, what confronted them were a host of sobering new reminders.

By Gate C, forklift drivers moved palettes stacked with food, bottled water and other donated supplies. A bulletin board by Gate D told rescue workers which way to go to their rest area or to get some lunch. Large American flags now hang from the dugout roofs and upper-deck facade at Shea, and inside the Mets' clubhouse, someone has taped a small American flag beneath the nameplate on every player's locker.

Most noticeably, just beyond the outfield fence, commercial airplanes again could be seen taking off and landing at nearby LaGuardia Airport - one of the first steps toward a "return to normal" that hardly feels normal to Mets reserve Lenny Harris. At least not yet.

"Every day when you wake up and see what's going on, it seems like it's still Tuesday," Harris said. He was sitting yesterday at a card table in the clubhouse, and before him lay a newspaper turned to an article about the terrorist attacks. Occasionally his eyes darted toward a big-screen TV that was tuned to CNN.

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Did Harris feel at risk? "This is mandatory right now. This is what the organization wants us to do ... [But] anything can happen now," Harris said with a shrug. "Our heart is with what's going on outside of here. I think about the fans ... You think: Who would think the terrorists would have used planes for bombs?"

Though thousands of people in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., already have steeled themselves and gone back to work, there is obviously an additional dimension that athletes (and the fans who see them) still have to cross because athletes perform in public. The games they play are arguably as symbolically important in American life as the buildings the terrorists struck. The crowds are just as large a target as the 50,000 or so people who worked in the World Trade Center on a typical day.

Though the various leagues' decisions about whether and when to resume play have been compared to the NFL's decision to play two days after the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, it's not the same at all. Back then, the nation was grief-stricken. But Tuesday's terrorist attacks left us with enormous grief compounded by incalculable danger.

Many of us long ago made peace with the idea that an act of God could kill us. But how many of us ever grappled with the thought of dying because of some act of terrorism? Especially terrorism on American soil? The same sporting events that once felt like escapist havens, one of the last places where some Americans say they still feel a sense of community, suddenly don't feel the same. Much like Wimbledon, where I've seen an innocently forgotten handbag draw a clutch of bomb-sniffing dogs and policemen within seconds, and much like the Olympics with their countless security checkpoints and X-ray machines, the stadium experience in America is about to drastically change.

When the Mets resume their home schedule against the Atlanta Braves on Sept. 21 - the first significant outdoor sporting event in New York since Tuesday's attacks - it will be amid heightened security devised by Major League Baseball and the New York Police Department. And rather than recount how the team dealt with a comparative trifle in protecting loudmouth relief pitcher John Rocker, Mets senior vice president Dave Howard fielded questions about whether the team has any say in deciding whether air traffic from LaGuardia is directed away from the stadium. (Howard's answer: The Mets don't.)

"We will make sure the building is safe and secure for customers on Friday," Howard said.

John Samerjan, vice president of public affairs for the New Jersey Stadium and Exposition Authority, which runs Giants Stadium, made similar assurances Friday. Samerjan said Giants Stadium officials are drawing on experience from hosting other high-security events such as the 1994 World Cup and the 1995 visit of Pope John Paul II, which he called "the tightest security I've seen in the 13 years I've been here."

Metal detectors, bag searches, the presence of more uniformed personnel, restricted parking around the perimeter of the stadium (the better to prevent a car bombing) could all become facts of life on game day. And so could delays. Heightened deterrence, not necessarily fan convenience, is the new buzzword. So keep some perspective. And hold the complaints.

Tsuyoshi Shinjo, the Mets' Japanese-born first-year outfielder, says he lived through a deadly earthquake in Osaka in 1995, and he was still in Japan when later that year the radical group Aum Truth was blamed for a deadly nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subways. And yet, Shinjo said yesterday, "I have never felt threatened in my life. But I have to face the reality now of what's going on in New York. I don't know about my safety."

The only honest answer since Tuesday is an unsatisfying one: We can only prepare. And hope.