Yankees-Mets Subway Series on September 11th is MLB's transcendent 25th remembrance

25 years. 25 years is the exact length of time that leaves an entire generation-plus entirely disconnected from the event that shaped you. Post-grads can thumb through the pages of their textbooks, stuck together by sediment and curled at the edges, past the release of the iPhone, Hurricane Katrina, the War in Iraq, and reach the day your life changed forever, viewing it only as an image some photographer took and some executive nodded at and some printer produced. It's probably an image of the towers in their full glory, completing the skyline on some sunny day that's like September 11, 2001, but isn't September 11, 2001. They probably don't show students the real images, the ones from the underbelly, the ones we were all inundated with and somehow still not desensitized to. If they did, this day wouldn't have turned into some sort of underground punchline for the slice of the generation that refuses to reckon with sincerity. Though, again, who could blame them? They weren't there. Text on a page. Photos of a metallic sky. Nothing loomed that day. It's just a morning to them. It was just a morning to us, once, too.

September 10, 2001 was a Yankees home game. The Red Sox were in town. Roger Clemens was going for 20 wins. I had inexplicable box seats behind home plate thanks to my dad's colleague. As we walked in the gates and settled in, the skies opened up and the rain came. I remember someone in the dugout handing my program back to me, unsigned, and vacating the premises. I remember walking the streets of the Bronx in the middle of the night on a school night, knowing this wasn't how things were supposed to go. This activity was supposed to happen hours later, post-victory. Now I was simply stuck and lost instead.

The thing about September 11 is that, before and after, there was baseball. There was baseball in New York City. There was Joe Torre and a cohort of Yankees visiting Ground Zero, joining the futile search knowing that there was very little they could do but provide comfort — and they did. There were the Mets, returning to New York to play the Braves while the Yankees were still on the road. There were road cities cheering on the Yankees — or, at least, cheering on the city they came from. The irony-poisoned world we live in now, the online vomitorium ... can you even imagine?

More importantly, could you imagine having tickets to Shea Stadium that night? September 21, 2001. 10 days later. You still don't know if it's safe to leave your home. You don't know if they're coming for you, or why they came for you in the first place. Some colleague has left you a ticket, and you remember the colleagues and friends of colleagues and sons of colleagues you lost 10 days prior, or haven't heard from yet. You know you will never hear from them again, but you can't allow yourself to say it. Will ballpark security make you feel safer, or more threatened? How can hundreds of armed guards do anything to stop a plane? We shouldn't be doing this. We should not be doing this.

But we had to. It's baseball.

Yankees-Mets Subway Series should be an annual 9/11 tradition

The Yankees and Mets played a Citi Field series on September 11, 2021 to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks and remember the lives we used to live before they occurred. Like most Subway Series these days, it was a series of back-and-forth affairs, with star turns for the heroes in both uniforms. When the Yankees and Mets link up these days, they both tend to leave preconceived notions, season records, and troubles at the door. They play for entertainment of the masses. They play for New York. On Friday night, the two teams will mark the 25th anniversary similarly, playing at Yankee Stadium with Nolan McLean on the mound opposing Carlos Rodón. Juan Soto is back again. Anthony Volpe announced his return with emphasis on Thursday night. This is how it should be every year, every time this day comes around, bouncing from one borough back to the other. It's too important a night to New York for the league not to pause and let the city have its showcase.

25 years of saying, "If you were not there, you would not know" has made it begin to sound inauthentic and regurgitated. And so we must continue to work to change that, to make it not so hollow. To color the sentiment in with the lives we lost, the heroes who were created on a dime. To live and breathe in New York City. To watch the Yankees. To watch the Mets. To disappear for a while.

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