25 years later, new MLB Network documentary revisits baseball’s post-9/11 return

One day in late May, four former New York Mets — Mike Piazza, Todd Zeile, Al Leiter and John Franco — settled into seats in a small theater at Citi Field. They had come together to rewatch footage from the night baseball returned to New York after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Over the course of a couple hours, the quartet relived that emotional Sept. 21 game against the Atlanta Braves. They reminisced about the atmosphere at Shea Stadium. They watched Piazza’s dramatic go-ahead homer disappear into the night. “What baseball did at the time,” Franco told his former teammates, “was put a small Band-Aid on a big wound.”

The retired players’ conversation is part of a two-hour original documentary, “When America Took the Field,” that revisits baseball’s role in helping restore some sense of normalcy to a reeling city and country.

The documentary will premiere at 10 p.m. ET Sept. 10 on MLB Network, ahead of the Mets’ weekend series against the New York Yankees in the Bronx that will commemorate the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11. It will be available on MLB.TV starting the week of Sept. 13.

“Twenty-five years later, it’s still in the forefront of my mind,” former Yankees ace Roger Clemens says in a trailer for the documentary.

His old manager, Joe Torre, echoes: “It feels like it just happened.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, then-MLB commissioner Bud Selig postponed all games through Sept. 16. Once games resumed, many remained unsure of how to move forward, and how soon. In St. Louis, Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck took the microphone before the Cardinals’ Sept. 17 home game and delivered a line that resonated far beyond the baseball world.

“I don’t know about you,” Buck said, “but as for me, the question has already been answered. Should we be here? Yes.”

The crowd roared.

Buck continued: “Should we show others how to demonstrate our resolve? Yes. And we shall do it here this evening. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to baseball. Welcome back to Busch Stadium.”

In the days after the Twin Towers collapsed, the Shea Stadium parking lots were used as supply centers to distribute disaster-relief items. The Mets’ scheduled home series Sept. 17-19 against the Pittsburgh Pirates was relocated to Pittsburgh for security reasons. On Sept. 21, the Mets came home, and those parking lots filled again with baseball fans. There were tributes to the 343 members of the New York City Fire Department who died responding to the attacks. Piazza provided the defining image with his two-run, eighth-inning homer.

Zeile, an executive producer on the documentary, referred to Sept. 21, 2001, as “the most significant day” of his baseball career.

“While wearing the caps of our first responders, it wasn’t just another baseball game,” Zeile said in a statement. “It helped unite America through the healing power of baseball and the strength of the human spirit. My hope is that this film preserves these stories for future generations and, above all, reminds us of the promise we all share: Never Forget.”

On Oct. 30, 2001 — 50 days after Sept. 11 — U.S. President George W. Bush strode to the mound at Yankee Stadium before Game 3 of the World Series wearing an FDNY sweater with a bulletproof vest underneath. He gave the crowd a thumbs up and then threw the most iconic ceremonial first pitch in MLB history: a perfect strike.

The documentary will be shown at a Sept. 10 event for Mets season ticket holders at Citi Field, according to an MLB Network news release. Piazza, Zeile, Franco, Leiter, Robin Ventura and David Wright are expected to attend.

Among the baseball voices in the film are numerous players — Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, John Smoltz, Bernie Williams, Curt Schilling, Paul Konerko and Craig Biggio and others — managers, executives and prominent media members, from Bob Costas to Joe Buck to Mike Francesa. In the documentary, it’s Francesa, the New York radio legend, providing perhaps the most apt description of the part baseball played after Sept. 11:

“We needed the escape. We needed the distraction. We needed the games.”