Jelisa Castrodale

That Monday was stuffed with stress, with quarterly reviews and budget cuts dampening the underarms of my finest business-casual clothing.

I spent the morning alt-tabbing between Excel spreadsheets and the AL East standings, where the Red Sox were 13 games back after crumbling in spectacular fashion.  After losing 13 of their last 14 — including three straight at Yankee Stadium — Dan Duquette had just announced that Pedro Martinez and his pastrami-shredded rotator cuff were done for the season. Worse than that, I’d whiffed on Marshall Faulk in my fantasy draft (despite my ladylike team name, Go Faulk Yourself) and was stuck with Trung “One Carry” Canidate instead.

Twenty-four hours later, none of it mattered. The entire office was staring wide eyed and open mouthed at the tiny black and white television on the security guard’s desk. It was the only TV in the entire office, and watching the events of 9/11 unfold in a grainy monochrome made them seem somehow more unreal. We stood there until the South Tower collapsed, pressed shoulder to shoulder, tight enough to smell the bitter coffee on our collective breath when we all finally remembered to exhale.

None of us knew what to say, what to do. The company president quickly made an appearance on each floor, his voice faltering as he told us all to go home to our families. I spent the afternoon cowering in my apartment, leaving the same voicemail message for anyone I knew with a 212 area code: “Please let me know you’re OK.”

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My then-boyfriend let himself in, dropped his bag on the chipped countertop and said, “We’re going to war, I’m afraid.”

He paused.

“I am afraid.”

We defrosted a carton of something and shoved it from side to side on our plates, staring at the television in silence until the images started to run into each other like the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen. 

The Red Sox were supposed to play in Tampa Bay that night, a detail I had to look up. Bud Selig postponed play until finally making the decision to cancel all games until Sept. 17. NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue did the same, wiping Week 2 from the schedule. “At a certain point playing our games can contribute to the healing process,” he said. “Just not at this time”.

College football followed, as did NASCAR, the PGA and LPGA and preseason NHL practice. 

Ten years later, I don't dare question the decisions that canceled those games. But I will say I needed sports then maybe more than I ever have. No, I didn’t feel like hanging out, painting my face, fist-bumping strangers and pretending that we hadn’t all witnessed a tragedy that still — 10 years later — leaves us with unresolved feelings of loss. I needed sports because they were the only things that still made sense. I understood baseball, I understood football.  But I had no idea what was happening in America, or what was going to happen. And that terrified me. 

Slideshow   Sept. 11 and sports Images from how fans and teams have coped with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Both before and after 9/11, I’ve used sports as a way to cope, to handle my grief, as a StubHub-sponsored shelter from the various tragedies that have intersected with my life. Those are the times when I’ve lost myself in the details of the games because I’ve been afraid that, if I didn’t, I might lose myself altogether.

When the first post-9/11 games were played, it was comforting, if not yet cathartic. Finally, we had a chance to share something safe, to have something else to talk about after spending a week looking at each other’s haunted expressions and knowing that there was nothing else to say. 

As The Sporting News recalls, “When [MLB] games resumed, teams wore the Stars & Stripes on their uniforms. The Mets wore caps with the NYPD and NYFD inscriptions rather than their interlocking NY […] All the teams, at the request of the commissioner, swapped out ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ for 'God Bless America.'"

The Sox went 10-10 in the final 20 games of the season, finishing 13.5 games back and out of the postseason. But I threw myself into the playoffs that year, rallying behind New York and, by extension, the Yankees. I clutched a Paul O’Neill signature bat I’d somehow acquired after a breakup and blinked back tears when the crowd chanted for him in Game 5 of the World Series, his final home game. The Yankees lost to the Diamondbacks in seven, another detail I had to look up; I remember wanting them to win so much, I’d almost convinced myself that they did. 

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By 2006 — the fifth anniversary of 9/11 — I’d gone back to muttering under my breath about Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon. Everyday life was inching closer to normal, although it was a different kind of normal, one where you travel with your shampoo in a pocket-sized bottle and go through more than one metal detector on the way into a stadium. 

I’d escaped another entry-level office job to tour for three weeks with Armed Forces Entertainment, doing standup on military bases in Alaska, Guam and the Marshall Islands. The timing was both good and terrible. Morale was low on a lot of the bases as Iraq tours were being extended and additional deployments were being ordered almost daily. There were also almost constant discussions of 9/11, with “Five Years Later” issues of magazines and special editions of news magazines providing round-the-clock reminders for thanking the men and women in uniform, the ones who were protecting (among other things) my right to say what I wanted onstage every night.

Slideshow   Looking back at the 2001 World Series Check out some of the best images from the 2001 World Series, which was played less than two months after the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack.

Again, I turned to sports. My set lists from those shows hit the recycle bin somewhere outside of Sitka, but they were heavy on setups involving the men who wear less-important uniforms for a living. There was a bit about Charlie Weis and the Fighting Irish. And Matt Leinart’s pregnant girlfriend, with a line about Reggie Bush helping him score then, too. (Look, I never said I was a great comic).

This Sunday, on the 10th anniversary, I already know I’ll tear up and choke on my heart as the start of the NFL season is preceded by what the league describes as a way to “unite fans to recognize those who lost their lives, honor the families who lost loved ones and salute the American spirit, the early responders on 9/11 and other heroes that contributed to the nation’s recovery.” 

Each MLB team and stadium will be conducting its own appropriate service. The courts at the U.S. Open will be inscribed with “9-11-01”.  And those NFL players and coaches will have uniform patches, pins or ribbons, as each sport provides a tangible reminder that the games that matter so little can still mean so very much.   

Jelisa Castrodale has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own. Read more at jelisacastrodale.com , follow her on twitter at twitter.com/gordonshumway, or contact her at