Category: Sports Columnists

As he commuted from South Jersey into Philadelphia on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, Hugh Douglas kept glancing at the skies.

“I remember driving across the Ben Franklin Bridge, I was looking in the air for those planes. You know, the next planes,” Douglas said. “Because that bridge is the biggest way into Philly, and I thought they would attack that next.”

Douglas, then a star defensive end for the Eagles, was driving to the practice facility, summoned for a team meeting to address an emergency. By then, of course, the skies were empty. The FAA had closed U.S. airspace at 9:42 that morning, and by 12:15, only birds flew over America.

Terrorists had hijacked four commercial flights that brilliant Tuesday morning and turned them into missiles.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower. At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. At 10:02 a.m., after a struggle between heroic passengers and hijackers, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pa., 200 miles west of Philadelphia.

Nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the attacks, still the largest death toll of any terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It stunned the world, and it left the nation shocked and terrorized, and it left the sporting world in turmoil.

Douglas had just turned 30. In his lifetime America had seemed invincible. Impenetrable. It was, by far, the most traumatic event he’d known.

“I thought it was the end of days,” Douglas said.

He was not alone.

Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville is a year older than Douglas. He grew up in Teaneck, N.J., less than 20 miles from what became to be known as Ground Zero, where the towers collapsed. He’d visited the towers frequently as a boy.

On 9/11, Glanville was with the Phillies in Atlanta, preparing for an important series against the Braves. When he heard that the terrorists targeted sites beyond New York, he worried about what might come next, and whether ballparks and stadiums were vulnerable.

“We didn’t know what imminent threats were still there. We heard that they might attack Atlanta,” Glanville said.

That worry persisted even when games resumed six days later, and beyond.

“You felt like, if you were in a stadium, you were a target.”

‘I thought it was a movie’

Douglas learned of the attacks from the movers helping him settle him and his wife at the time, Simona, into their town house in Marlton, N.J.

“They blew up the tower,” one mover told Douglas. He wasn’t quite sure what the guy meant. The cable company hadn’t arrived yet, so the mover began to jerry-rig an antenna onto a television. Before he finished, another mover, still listening, announced, “They hit the other tower.”

Finally, a fuzzy image appeared on the screen, the towers burning. A few minutes later, at 10:28, the north tower collapsed.

Glanville had much better reception.

Baseball players are a nocturnal breed, but Glanville is one of the few who relishes a hearty breakfast. Also, he’s a reader — he has an engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania — so he rarely turns on his hotel TV.

“There aren’t a lot of players who get up that early, except Kevin Jordan. So I go out of my room, get in the elevator, and Nina Jordan’s there, Kevin Jordan’s wife,” Glanville said. “I’m, like, ‘Good morning,’ with a smile. She’s like, ‘They hit the towers.’ ”

Glanville flashed back to Feb. 26, 1993, when terrorists attempted to take down the north tower with a car bomb. They failed. Seven people died. Glanville assumed this was similar.

“The first thing I thought is, ‘Oh, again?’ ”

Not exactly.

“We were in CNN country, so I came out of the elevator, I saw banks and banks of TVs,” Glanville said. “And then, of course, we were just, like, locked in.”

Phillies manager Larry Bowa wasn’t watching TV in his room, either, but, with a teenage daughter, he always kept his phone close. When it buzzed that morning and he saw her number he was concerned, of course, but not as concerned as he soon would be.

“She said, ‘Did you see the TV?’ And I said, ‘No.’ She says, ‘Turn it on,’ ” Bowa said. “And when I turned it on, I thought it was a movie.”

‘We took a vote’

What happened in the next couple of days is a blur for most of us who lived through 9/11, and most of us weren’t star entertainers and their bosses walking the thin line of propriety.

Would baseball be played Tuesday night? Would baseball or football, either college or pro, be played on the weekend?

Flights resumed sporadically just two days after the attacks, but it was about a week before air travel resumed full throat. The Eagles and the rest of the NFL hunkered down.

“We knew pretty quick we weren’t going to Tampa that weekend,” Douglas said. “So we just practiced. And it was weird, right? You get planes flying over South Philly all the time, because the airport is so close. There were, like, no planes that week.”

It was as if everyone held their breath, just as they’d done after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, which paused most of college football and briefly paused the NBA and NHL.

“Nobody knew what was the right time,” Bowa said. “Some people were saying they might cancel the whole season.”

As it turned out, baseball games resumed Sept. 17. The Expos hosted the Marlins with the first pitch thrown at 7:10 p.m., so baseball officially resumed first in Canada. But the Braves visited the Phillies and the Mets visited the Pirates, and both games went off at 7:19 p.m., so Pennsylvania co-hosted the return of America’s game in America.

‘We took a vote’

Getting from 9/11 to 9/17 was quite a journey for the Phillies.

Games were suspended immediately, but MLB dithered regarding when they would resume. The Phillies spent three days in Atlanta, then decided to bus to Cincinnati, where they were scheduled to play over the weekend. They were outside of Knoxville, Tenn., when they heard that those games might not happen, either.

What now?

They pulled the two buses into a rest stop. Players disembarked to try and get cellphone reception, which was poor on the buses, and check in with their families. At that point, mild chaos ensued.

Should they reroute to Philadelphia? Should they return to Atlanta, where flights would be easier to arrange? Should they just continue to Cincinnati and maybe ride out the weekend?

They couldn’t take the buses to Philadelphia because the bus driver had logged too many hours.

“We took a vote,” Glanville said. “It was everybody, 40 or whatever, to 2. And the two were Bowa and (reliever) Dennis Cook, and Cook lived in Atlanta.”

So, on to Cincinnati, where they discovered those games were, in fact, postponed. Inimitable traveling secretary Frank Coppenbarger, now retired, wheedled a chartered plane for the next day. The Phillies were home for supper on Sept. 15.

MLB delayed the playoffs for a week. The Phillies made up the postponed games in Atlanta and Cincinnati after the regular season ended. Like their NFL counterparts, they played the rest of the season in a daze of heightened security and heightened anxiety.

‘A sense of pride’

NFL players were used to being treated like royalty on their charter flights to games. A week and a half after 9/11, they found out what it was like on tarmacs in countries where terrorism is a constant threat.

“We used to just park our cars at the facility, get on a bus, ride to the airport, get off, and walk right on the plane,” Douglas said. “Now, you went to the airport, man, and everybody was on high alert. There’s guys with machine guns or whatever, there’s tons of security. Even on the plane. And you had to watch your mouth.

“I went to the bathroom and came back and told the fellas I blew it up,” he recalled, and was quickly admonished by security. “Yeah, you couldn’t say you ‘blew up the bathroom’ anymore.”

As with MLB, NFL playoffs were delayed by a week, so the Eagles made up their postponed game at Tampa in January after their final scheduled game of the regular season. Their first game after the attacks was in Seattle, where they played the Seahawks at the University of Washington stadium while their new stadium was being built. As in many stadiums that day, the pregame national anthem was performed as a giant flag that covered the entire field.

Who held it? Douglas, his teammates, and his coaches joined their counterparts from the Seahawks and dozens of first responders. Douglas had a hand on that flag, and he remains moved by that ceremony to this day.

“Just, I don’t know,” Douglas said. “Just a sense of pride.”

‘Tip your cap’

Pride: That’s what Bowa felt on Sept. 17. He’s proud that Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy, was part of the return to sport. He’s proud that the franchise he played for and managed was, with the Pirates, the first team in the U.S. to resume, and he’s proud that baseball, America’s game, was the first front-line sport to restart.

Bowa is a hard man, but he understood the situation. He held a team meeting before the game and told the players that anyone who didn’t feel like playing didn’t have to; he understood. No takers.

The pregame left Bowa and Glanville shaken. As late Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas delivered a moving pregame address to viewers, a montage compiled by “Video” Dan Stephenson helped settle the 27,910 fans at Veterans Stadium into their seats.

“People were in tears over that,” Glanville said.

It was the music that got to Bowa. He’d served in the U.S. Army Reserve as a young man, and his patriotism runs deep.

First, he recalled, there was Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” Then, right before the first pitch, with the teams lined up on the baselines, came “God Bless America” and the national anthem, performed back-to-back by — who else? — the star-spangled Valley Forge Chorus.

Then, the game.

Phillies ace Robert Person went eight innings, gave up two runs, Jose Mesa got the save, and the Phillies won, 5-2, and drew to within two games of the Braves in the National League East.

Who’d they beat?

Braves legend Greg Maddux.

Glanville got a hit, Pat Burrell got two, rookie All-Star Jimmy Rollins scored a run, and MVP candidate Bobby Abreu tripled. But all of them — Person, Mesa, Glanville, Rollins, Abreu — they were just co-stars.

Nobody in baseball met the moment like Scott Bruce Rolen.

Chipper Jones’ homer gave the Braves a 1-0 lead in the first inning, but Rolen tied it with a leadoff homer in the second. He drove in Abreu from third base in the fourth for a 2-1 lead.

Then, with two out in the bottom of the sixth inning, Rolen homered again. The Phillies led, 3-2. The Vet rocked and rolled as Rolen returned to the dugout and, as ever, humbly took off his helmet. The crowd was nearly tearing the old stadium down, begging for a curtain call, but that just wasn’t the sort of thing Rolen did. Ever.

Bowa called Rolen over.

“Scotty,” he said, “you got to go out and tip your cap.”

Rolen replied, “Well, you know I don’t do that.”

“Scotty,” Bowa said, “this is something different.”

Rolen stood there. Paused. Relented: “OK, you’re right.”

He scooted up the steps. Tipped his cap. The crowd went crazy. Even Bowa lost himself for a few minutes:

“I can honestly say, as competitive as I was, that’s the first time I really didn’t care about winning or losing a baseball game.”