“Baseball is a constant. Every day there’s a new game. You wake up, and you get to try again.”
The words, from Brielle Saracini, were a perfect encapsulation of what Friday night in New York City was all about. The Yankees and Mets took the field at Yankee Stadium on the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on a night filled with remembrance and celebration of the city and the lives lost. But it was also a celebration of baseball.
“I certainly understand the weight of today, having two New York teams here playing,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone before the game. “Having lived through being a baseball player at the time, knowing the role that baseball played at the time, it feels like an honor to go out there tonight.”
“It gives you an immense amount of gratitude for what we do get to do for a living,” reflected Mets interim manager Andy Green. “This game has played a part in this country’s healing... It’s not just been distractions or entertainment, but it’s been something that communities coalesced around, and it's made an impact on lives that goes far beyond the team you root for.”
Nowhere was that more evident than in the presence of Brielle Saracini, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch after the Yankees held a pregame ceremony recognizing the New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department, the Port Authority Police Department, Tuesday’s Promise, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Brielle and her husband, Sean McGuire, who also threw out a first pitch, were both 10 years old when their fathers were killed on September 11th. Brielle’s father was Captain Victor Saracini, who was the pilot of United Flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, where Sean’s father, Patrick, was working.
Three days after the tragedy, Brielle wrote a letter to Derek Jeter, detailing her family’s loss. When Jeter received the letter, he invited Brielle and her family to a game on September 26th, and a lifelong friendship was formed. Two years later, Brielle and Sean met at Camp Better Days, which was established to provide support for children who lost a parent on September 11th. Almost 16 years to the day after their fathers were taken from them, Brielle and Sean were married.
But Brielle doesn’t know if any of that would have happened without baseball.
“I've heard a lot of ballplayers say we didn't know if we should play or if it was the right thing,” she said after throwing out the first pitch. “It's amazing to think that, if the season wasn't finished, how my entire life and trajectory would have changed. I can't imagine a scenario of baseball not being played because it meant so much to so many people.”
After the events on the morning of September 11th, Major League Baseball canceled all games. The National Football League, which had just completed Week 1 of its season two days earlier, postponed all games for Week 2. When Major League Baseball restarted play on September 18th, Derek Jeter was one of the players who was unsure whether he should be on the field.
“As an athlete, it was the first time that I said to myself, ‘Why am I even playing?’” Jeter recalled. “Obviously, the games got canceled, and my initial thought was, ‘We're not going to come back and play. What does baseball mean?’ And then you have a chance to meet a lot of family members who've lost loved ones…and then you realize from the stories that they've shared. [Brielle] even said in her letter, the memories that they have at Yankee Stadium, her and her dad, or going to games, or being a Yankee fan. That's when you realize that our job was to at least try to give people something to cheer for for a few hours a day.”
“I understand the position,” added Brielle. “Looking back now, I can't imagine if somebody said, ‘Okay, go play a baseball game.’ You know, bigger things were going on, but that's definitely what the country needed and what the country united around. It became this special thing that healed me. It healed 10-year-old Brielle.”
So 25 years later, Yankee Stadium filled with fans carrying American flags or enlarged photos of people who lost their lives on September 11th. Fans held signs about unity or signs that were replicas of those from 25 years ago, reading, “America Fears Nobody. Let’s Play Ball.”
In the hours before the game, the Yankees' blue “NY” logo, filled with white stars and outlined in red, stood out in the grass behind home plate just like it did on September 25th, 2001, when the Yankees returned home to play the Rays. The view it saw beyond the center field fence was slightly different, but the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, and the white of Yankee Stadium’s classic facade remained the same.
Sep 11, 2026; Bronx, New York, USA; A special logo is displayed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11th prior to the game between the New York Mets and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images
IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
In some ways, today was an eerily similar day to the one 25 years ago. The sky was a clear blue. The sun was shining brightly. The exuberance of summer was still in the air. That’s one thing that will always stick with anybody who was old enough to remember being in New York on September 11th. It really was a perfect New York day at a time in our lives when a beautiful day couldn’t help but fill you with optimism. Today’s sun was shining just as brightly, but the luster wasn’t quite as luminous. Perhaps because it reminds us of 25 years ago. Perhaps because we’ve lived through too much in the intervening years.
“It's hard to believe it's been 25 years,” reflected Jeter. “In some sense, it's been a long time. But in another sense, it seems like it was just yesterday because some of the memories are so vivid in your mind, and I think they'll always be vivid in your mind because that was a day that changed the world forever.”
Memories of that night, following the chaos, are as clear to me as if they happened a few weeks ago. I can still remember being 16 years old and aimlessly wandering the streets of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn with friends trying to process what had happened. A collection of us were stranded, unable to get back across the river and into Manhattan. We were generously taken in by a classmate’s family for the evening, but we couldn’t go home and we sure as hell couldn’t sleep, so we wandered. We sat in playgrounds in the dark. We walked the strangely quiet streets of the neighborhood, and found ourselves over at the Promenade, staring across the East River at a New York City skyline that would never be the same again.
Up until that point, things had felt rather predictable. Same school schedule on the same days. Same practices. Same afterschool activities. Now, my home in downtown Manhattan was behind a series of security checkpoints. My parents would soon have to put tape over the windows to keep out dangerous toxins and the smell of charred…everything. To go home and see my family, I would need proof of residence that I didn’t have and would need to get from school the next morning.
But how do you reconcile a moment where nothing happened to you and yet everything happened to you?
I’m at this ceremony because I’m covering a baseball game; a relatively innocuous contest between an eliminated Mets team and a Yankees team that is locked into a playoff spot. I see Cody Bellinger hit a three-run home run in the second inning to give the Yankees a commanding 4-1 lead over the Mets. I jot it down for a recap, but I think about the real reason I was asked to attend this game. Which is where my existential question comes into play.
In many ways, nothing happened to me on September 11th. I wasn’t hurt. My home wasn’t buried in dust. I didn’t lose any loved ones. On the other hand, my life irrevocably changed in ways I sometimes don’t acknowledge.
Around 9 AM, I was pulled out of what I believe was a Journalism class in the school computer lab to head to the chapel where we had assemblies. There were rumblings of planes hitting the World Trade Centers, and I remember somebody saying, “It was terrorists.” I also remember that we all scoffed. Terrorists were not real to us. Not then. It was something limited to movies. Now we know all too well.
But perhaps baseball can help us to remember what it was like before too.
“I think it's great to have ceremonies like this,” offered Jeter. “We get a chance to reflect on it. You look at some of the players that are here who were born after September 11th. I think it's very important that we make sure that we teach them the history and what happened, how the world changed.”
Nolan McLean, who started the game for the Mets, was born just one and a half months before September 11th. Six members of the Mets and one member of the Yankees were born after September 11th, including Francisco Alvarez, Carson Benge, A.J. Ewing, and George Lombard Jr.
“I talked to our players a little bit,” said Boone. “Some of our guys went to fire stations recently. A lot of us went to Ground Zero recently.”
Yesterday, Yankees players, coaches, and staff had the opportunity to visit the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to pay their respects to the nearly 3,000 victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 10, 2026
Through guided tours and time spent at the @Sept11Memorial exhibits, the… pic.twitter.com/T35II2nEuz
The Yankees also brought back members of their 2001 World Series team, not only to share memories with current players but to honor the team and the city that showed so much resilience after the attacks. Joe Torre, Jorge Posada, Paul O’Neill, Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius, Mariano Rivera, and Jeter all took the field before the game. They also spoke in a video package about how special it was to return to the field that fall after such an unbelievable tragedy and feel the city pushing them deeper into the playoffs. Although they would ultimately fall short against the Diamondbacks, Jeter specifically mentioned that the team’s grit and back-to-back comeback wins in Games 4 and 5 at home mattered more to him than another title.
“There's some things that are much bigger than just the game we have the privilege of playing and being a part of,” admitted Green. “There’s an opportunity to have some kind of cathartic moments in your life when you step back and think about what really matters and what some people have been through. It centers you; it re-centers you. It keeps you going.”
In that sense, baseball doesn’t matter at all, and it also matters so much. Winning and losing a game is not a life-or-death endeavor. For the fans in the stadiums and in front of the TV, their favorite team winning will not cure an illness, make rent easier to pay, or put food on the table. But it can heal a broken heart and bring communities together.
That was certainly the case in the fall of 2001.
Even before the Yankees made their deep postseason run, baseball returned to New York City on September 21st at Shea Stadium. Only days earlier, Shea Stadium had been used as an emergency supply relief center and a place for Ground Zero volunteers who came from out of town to sleep. Then, on September 21, 2001, Mets catcher Mike Piazza came to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning with a runner on base and the Mets trailing the Braves 2–1. Piazza drilled a fastball to straightaway center-field for a dramatic, go-ahead two-run home run, and Shea Stadium shook in the way only Shea Stadium could.
Mike Piazza's home run in the first baseball game on New York soil after the attacks on September 11th helped a nation heal. pic.twitter.com/6do5WqA0hy
— SNY (@SNYtv) September 11, 2026
Weeks later, the Yankees, who won the American League East, began a playoff series against the Athletics. Even if you weren’t a Yankees fan, their World Series run was thrilling for all New Yorkers. Maybe you weren’t actively rooting for them to win, but you also weren’t overly angry if they did. That may not seem like much, but it’s a lot more than you realize in this city.
Every night when a game was on, we knew the city was watching. We needed it. As Brielle recounted, it gave us a sense of normalcy, “a sense of comfort and predictability in a very unpredictable scenario.”
But, perhaps more importantly, baseball gave us a break from “a time where we all just felt the gravity of the situation that was rooted in hate,” reflected Brielle. “To be able to flip that around and find a bright spot, you know… It gave us something to cheer about. [It] gave us something to look back on.”
In a sense, baseball has always done that. It has survived through all of our country’s highs and lows. It’s been there when we’ve broken barriers and when we’ve broken down. It bonded us together when moments threatened to fracture us. Maybe we’ve taken it for granted, but we should never forget the way that baseball has brought us together and helped us heal. Perhaps it can also continue to show us that we’re capable of doing that on our own if we choose.
