Twenty-two years ago today, two hundred and forty-six Americans arrived at the airport in anticipation of their flights, Two-thousand six hundred and six of them arrived at their place of work to begin the day, three hundred firefighters arrived at the firehouse for their morning shift, eight paramedics arrived for their morning shift, and sixty police officers arrived at their stations for morning patrol. None of them survived past 10:00 a.m. The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 changed the American way of life forever, further, it changed the lives of so many individual Americans who lost so much that day twenty-two years ago. Every year on this day, our country mourns.
I find it is the one day of the year recently when Americans pause for long enough to be truly present. We reflect on the stuff of nightmares that became our reality on the seemingly beautiful, picturesque September morning. We honor those we lost but also the people they left behind.
Writing this is strange, for I personally was born into a world that was reshaped by the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11th, 2001. I was not alive but if it were not my sister’s first day of pre-school, my dad would have been at a meeting in the North Tower. Had he been there I would not be writing this article on the twenty-second anniversary of this tragic event.
No matter who I’m talking to about what happened that day or what I’m watching, it always stands out to me how good people were to one another. As Senator John Kerry once stated, “it was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.” Police officers and firefighters ran into the North and South towers, up the stairs passing people running out to safety. Strangers reached out to one another, offering support. Every day passengers on Flight 93 stormed the cockpit and took down the plane in Shanksville, Pennsylvania saving countless lives from another attack. In the days following September 11th people did everything and anything they could to help one another, the first responders down at Ground Zero, and to support grieving families who lost so much that day.
I believe deeply that what it meant to be American changed that day. These horrific events were carried out with the intention of breaking the American spirit, to ending everything we did and still stand for. They did the exact opposite. Yes, in the days that followed there was a fear and a heartache that no one should ever have to know felt by all Americans, most especially in New York and Washington D.C., though there was also hope and strength.
What stands out to me most about the aftermath of 9/11 is the way people leaned on baseball. It is America’s most treasured pastime and after a ten-day break, it began to breathe life into a broken nation. The images of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon burning are seared into our collective consciousness, but so are the images of President Bush throwing the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, while the rubble and debris still burned in Downtown, Manhattan. At that game, people in the stands were holding a huge banner that said, “USA fears nobody play ball.” The first game played after the break was on September 21, 2001. The New York Mets played the Atlanta Braves at Shea Stadium, and Mike Piazza’s eighth-inning homerun that night didn’t
just mean something to his fans, it meant something to Americans everywhere, most especially New Yorkers. The game wasn’t over.
On that night in New York, baseball was about so much more, the team rivalries ceased to matter, and every person in that stadium that night was on the same team. Now we are not here to tell some romanticized story about how baseball healed a people and a country that in many ways were broken irreparably, though we are saying that the links between the American game of baseball and the hope it gave for a brighter tomorrow after the worst day America has ever experienced is an important story to share.
Twenty-two years later we pause to mourn and remember but as a country, we are in such a different place. I think baseball is a great metaphor for the state of our country right now, we have two teams with some strong and fierce rivalries and a lot at stake. There are a lot of mean-spirited comments being made from supporters of the other team and also a whole lot of passion. Though the first baseball game after 9/11 and the ones that followed proved that whichever team you liked the best winning wasn’t the point of the game. It showed that at the end of the day, we are all Americans, we are all so much more alike than we are different when we focus on the things that really matter.
On this September 11th we here at The Ribotsky Institute would urge you to focus, for just a moment, not on the America of the morning of September 11th, but on the America of September 12th and the days that followed. Let’s allow ourselves to take something important away from remembering the tragic events that happened twenty-two years ago, this division and hatred that we are living through is not worth it for none of it matters, when you get down to the bottom of it, we are all Americans and on today and all days that is a great thing to be.
In honoring those we lost remind yourself what America truly means. The things that divide us are simply not as important as they may seem, just like in the first baseball game after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the different teams cease to matter when you put the history of our people into perspective.
For someone who wasn’t alive on that harrowing day, the unity that was so evident in the aftermath of such terror is the very reason why I love our country, I have hope that we can take more from this anniversary than just sadness, but to be reminded of how strong we are as a people when we stop attacking one another about things that don’t really matter. On today and all days, we must find it within ourselves to put our differences aside for the greater good, just like we did after the worst day our country has ever experienced. We owe it to the people who fought so bravely to defend the freedoms we hold so dear. Our response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 proved that while some things needed to change and they did, the freedom that was so important to our American way of life would not change. More importantly, we would not let hate win. Please do not let it win now.
By Skylar Ribotsky for The Ribotsky Institute
RibotskyInstitute.com 
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