Baseball and Bin Laden
Sport has a wonderful way of uniting people. At a game you stand united. That guy next to you – you don’t know him, but a home run is hit, a touchdown scored and you are cheering alongside him, united. It is a great feeling of camaraderie and shared joy. Yet there is, perhaps, a time when it goes too far, which is why I watched the highlights of the pre-game ceremonies around the Majors yesterday, and indeed heard about the US celebrations with mixed feelings.
Let us not get this wrong. Bin Laden was evil, and deserved what he got. 9/11 is a day that forever changed the course of the history of the world, and in no way in a good direction. 3000 people were murdered in cold blood. As Damian so rightly pointed out in his article ‘And the Rocket’s red glare’ the USA is a deeply proud nation, and 9/11 hurt the US in a way that nothing since Pearl Harbor could have. The war on terror was a necessary, if unfortunate, part of the healing process.
And let us not forget Baseball’s role in that process. In 2001 I was only 10, and had not at that time become a baseball fan, yet I remember 9/11 very clearly. Which tells me just how powerful baseball’s role in the healing was. When I started to get interested in baseball, five years later, some of the first videos I watched were some of those from immediately after 9/11; the teams wearing FDNY caps, Mike Piazza’s Home Run, the Mets’ run at the postseason. And then the Postseason itself which was a seven game epic of World Series that would have been an epic in any year, but it was heightened in the rarefied atmosphere post 9/11. George Bush’s iconic first pitch in game three, Derek Jeter becoming ‘Mr November’, Johnson and Schilling’s combined MVP heroics, and of course, returning to the 9/11 atmosphere, Luis Gonzalez single to win it off Mariano Rivera. I watched the clips from 2001 on MLB.com again this morning, and they are still incredibly powerful, spine tingling moments. They demonstrate the power of sport to unite a grieving nation. I encourage any baseball, any sport fan even to watch them again.
However, having watched those clips again was part of the reason why I had mixed feelings with yesterday’s celebrations. As the chants of ‘USA, USA’ rang around Fenway, Times Square and in Washington DC, I could not help but reflect that in some ways the world had moved on. It wasn’t the baseball that was uniting the people. They were united by the death of a man who had become America’s number one enemy. They were celebrating his death and remembering the deaths of US servicemen, and the 3000 victims of 9/11. It was an outpouring of national pride and grief all combined into one. Yet I wonder one thing – how many of those cheering around the ballparks of America last night considered the very real cost of their victory? 100,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the war in Afghanistan. So to the people of America, the sports fans of America I have one message. Let sport unite you in love as it did ten years ago. Remember not only your own losses but the losses of others. Let the people of Afghanistan, as well as America, be in your thoughts and prayers as you celebrate this event. Because this is perhaps the most important lesson that sport teaches us; while we are against each other on the field, we are united off it.
Content courtesy of CharlesJS
