When Shea Stadium Became More Than a Ballpark: 25 Years Later Bobby Valentine, Steve Tracshel and the Mets Remember the Days When Baseball Became Secondary
There are moments in history when we realize just how insignificant sports really are.
September 11, 2001, was one of those moments.
For the New York Mets, the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center had nothing to do with standings, pennant races or baseball. Shea Stadium, normally a place where thousands gathered to watch the Mets play, suddenly became something entirely different — a staging area, a relief center and, perhaps most importantly, a place where people could simply show up and ask one question:
What can I do to help?
That story is at the heart of the Mets Original Film "11 Days in September", which we recently screened for a live audience. The documentary is a powerful look back at what happened at Shea Stadium in the days following September 11. But after the screening, the story continued as former Mets manager Bobby Valentine and former Mets pitcher Steve Trachsel joined us for a live Q&A, offering their own memories of those extraordinary days.
And listening to them tell it, you are reminded just how quickly baseball became secondary.
“The one thought in my mind was that I was the leader and I had people to take care of,” Valentine recalled. “Baseball was really secondary. We're concerned about people getting killed, the damage it was done to the city, and I think we were all concerned — what could we do to help?”
The Mets were in Pittsburgh when the attacks occurred. With commercial flights grounded, the team eventually made the long trip back to New York by bus.
As the bus approached New York, the reality of what had happened became impossible to ignore.
Todd Zeile told his teammates to look toward the skyline.
“Everybody look to your right where the towers were,” he said. “There was no more towers. It was all smoke.”
For those who had watched the images on television, seeing the smoke rising from Ground Zero from a distance made the tragedy suddenly — and frighteningly — real.
“It seemed unreal watching it on TV,” Valentine recalled, “but it became very real crossing the GW.”
That feeling of the tragedy suddenly becoming real was echoed by both Valentine and Trachsel during our Q&A.
“We were the New York team,” Valentine said. “Our parking lot was the staging area. When we came back from Pittsburgh and took that bend over in New Jersey and saw the skyline being covered with smoke, it became personal.”
For Trachsel, that personal connection continued to grow as the days went on. He remembered living in Stamford and realizing that cars sitting untouched at the train station belonged to people who had gone into the city and never returned.
“It got to the point where it was like, okay, well, obviously, these cars belong to people that were working down at the World Trade Center,” Trachsel recalled. “But now we have to put the names to the cars and then the cars to the families.”
It was the beginning of what the film described as the shrinking of the degrees of separation — from three degrees, to two, to one.
While the players were making their way home, Shea Stadium was already changing.
The parking lot became a massive staging area for emergency personnel. Donations began arriving. Food, water, clothing and work boots were collected and organized. Locker rooms were turned into places where exhausted workers could shower, eat and sleep.
The operation grew almost organically.
Sue Lucchi, the New York Mets' longtime head of ballpark operations, rolled out an old whiteboard and wrote:
“Drop donations here.”
“That is literally how the whole thing came to be,” she explained. “The word got out now that we were a donation site.”
Soon, cars were lining up.
“People showing up with food, people showing up with clothes. They had cases of water. We now became a 24/7 operation.”
Shea's proximity to major highways, its enormous parking areas and its location relative to Lower Manhattan made it an ideal staging point. The stadium could accommodate emergency workers while also providing a place for those coming back from the recovery effort to rest.
There were showers. Beds. Food. A first-aid room.
And outside, the parking lot became a sea of activity.
That's where Steve Trachsel remembers seeing Bobby Valentine take charge.
“Bobby was holding his own out in the parking lot, giving direction,” Trachsel recalled. “I remember him being up on the back of a box truck sorting clothes that were coming in.”
During the live Q&A, Trachsel provided an even greater sense of just how quickly the relief effort expanded.
“I remember when we pulled in, there must have been 75, 100 fire trucks in our parking lot,” he said. “There was 18-wheel trailer trucks. And then they just kept coming and coming.”
Someone said they needed boots.
“The next day, there must have been 2,500 pairs of boots, face masks,” Trachsel remembered. Then came the supplies for the search-and-rescue dogs.
“And next thing you know, there was 20,000 pounds of dog food.”
The generosity seemed endless. People from across the country were calling, asking how they could get supplies to New York.
“It was just amazing to watch the amount of support that was pouring in,” Trachsel said.
Eventually, however, the question changed from What do we need? to What do we do with everything we have?
“We have 10,000 pairs of boots,” Trachsel remembered thinking. “I think we're going to be good for a while.”
For Valentine, this wasn't simply an assignment or something that came with being the Mets manager.
“In my personal situation, I felt it was a call to duty,” he said.
He was no longer simply managing a baseball team. He was trying to figure out where he and his players could make a difference.
In those first hours and days, there was still hope.
The operation at Ground Zero was viewed as a rescue effort. People believed there might be survivors buried beneath the rubble.
“Every second counted,” Trachsel recalled. “This was a rescue effort.”
But as the days passed, the tragedy became increasingly personal.
Friends were missing. Firefighters and police officers who had gone into the World Trade Center had not come home.
“It continued to become more and more real because it became more and more personal,” Trachsel said.
And Valentine was feeling it too.
“We were the New York team,” he reminded us during the Q&A. “We needed to show up. We needed to be part of what was going on.”
What was going on was a great deal of need.
Yet amid the horror, there were extraordinary moments of humanity.
Late one night, a group of nuns arrived at Shea Stadium carrying candles. They gathered in a circle to pray.
Then they heard something approaching.
At first, nobody knew what it was.
Looking across the parking lot, they saw headlights.
Then they realized there were dozens of motorcycles.
The bikers shut off their engines, and one of them called out:
“We hear you need some help.”
Valentine's response was simple:
“Sure do. Come on in.”
Then the bikers began singing “God Bless America.”
The people gathered in the Shea parking lot joined in.
Looking back, Lucchi said she deliberately did not want cameras there.
“I didn't want the press recording this because this was such devastation that we weren't here for publicity.”
What happened at Shea that night became, for Valentine, a reminder of what Americans could be during a crisis.
“We can be very divided in this country at times,” he said. “But when a crisis like this, when a tragedy like this, that's when we do all come together.”
There is no footage of that particular Shea Stadium moment.
There are only the memories of the people who were there.
Eventually, Valentine and others made their way downtown to Ground Zero.
The trip from Shea was largely silent.
Nobody really knew what to expect.
Jay Horwitz remembered that Valentine seemed to believe they might be able to do something — even something small — to lift the spirits of those working at the site.
The reality was overwhelming.
“You really can't describe the vision and the scope of the destruction,” Todd Zeile recalled. “You couldn't imagine that these two buildings now were two big piles of rubble.”
For others, the experience was almost impossible to process.
“It didn't look real,” one recalled. “It did not look real. It looked like something out of a movie set.”
The closer they got, the more devastating it became.
Faces were covered in soot. Clothing was blackened. Smoke still rose from the site.
“It was scary and sad,” came the recollection. “The smell is really intense and...you can see still smoke emanating from the site.”
For Al Leiter who made the trip, there was even a feeling of uncertainty about whether they belonged there.
“I felt like, what am I doing here? This is invasive,” he recalled. “I'm coming into these people's world and the last thing they want to see is some dumb jock walk into here like I think I've got something to contribute.”
But they went.
They listened.
They stood alongside the people who were living through the worst days of their lives.
And they tried to help.
Eventually, baseball had to return.
But nobody knew exactly what that would mean.
Security around Shea changed dramatically. Metal detectors and scanners were installed. Bags were restricted. Bomb-sniffing dogs and Secret Service agents became part of the new reality.
The ballpark that once represented an escape from the outside world suddenly had to acknowledge just how dangerous that outside world could be.
During the Q&A, Valentine put that fear into perspective.
“These players had to go back to work, and their workplace was this big stage,” he said. “And this big stage really at the time was a big target. And we all knew that it was a big target.”
“We all knew that the bad guys were still out there.”
The Mets weren't simply returning to a baseball game. They were returning to a place that everyone knew could potentially be targeted again.
“We didn't know if people were going to show up,” Valentine said.
When they did return, everything was different.
“Metal detectors, dogs sniffing in the lockers, guys with long guns up on the roof of the Shea Stadium,” Valentine remembered. “I mean, it was different.”
And then he paused to emphasize what he believes is sometimes lost when we look back at that night.
“The courage that it took for these guys to go out there in the middle of the field, in the view of the world, and work, go to work, put on their uniform, represent their team, represent their city, represent their country.”
Steve Trachsel remembered the uncertainty from a player's perspective.
“It went from there’s no games now. The season's canceled. We're going to play games, but there's not going to be any fans,” he recalled.
The players worked out, waited and tried to prepare for a game that nobody knew exactly when — or how — would be played.
Then came September 21, 2001.
The Mets and Atlanta Braves would play the first regular-season professional sporting event in New York City since September 11.
And it was immediately clear that this was not going to be just another baseball game.
American flags filled the stands.
The Mets and Braves — fierce rivals who didn't particularly like each other — stood together.
Bobby Cox and Bobby Valentine had to overcome years of competition to embrace the humanity of the moment.
Valentine revealed during our Q&A that making that happen wasn't necessarily easy. It took multiple conversations with Cox before the two managers agreed to lead their teams onto the field together.
Finally, Cox suggested they lead the parade and see if the players followed.
They did.
“The unifying effect that that game and other games had is something we need to bring back,” Valentine said. “And I hope we don't need another tragedy to do it.”
Trachsel remembered another small but significant detail from the period — his friendship with Braves pitcher Steve Karsay.
That connection made the rivalry easier to put aside.
And then came the moment that would become one of the most enduring images in Mets history.
The Mets trailed Atlanta 2-1 in the eighth inning.
Mike Piazza stepped to the plate.
What happened next has become one of the most enduring moments in Mets history.
Piazza hit a two-run home run to left-center field, giving the Mets a 3-2 lead and sending Shea Stadium into an emotional eruption.
But during our Q&A, Trachsel offered a fascinating perspective on that moment.
While the stadium erupted, he wasn't celebrating.
“I just remember being really angry during that game,” he said.
He remembered seeing the replay of Piazza's home run and his wife and children asking, essentially, *Where are you? Why aren't you celebrating?*
Trachsel looked at the footage and realized he was there with his arms hanging over the dugout railing.
“I never really thought about it until they said that,” he admitted.
The home run was enormous, but it didn't immediately erase the anger or grief.
“We're meeting with families at that point,” Trachsel explained. “We're seeing the wives and the kids from Tuesday's Children and all that.”
For Trachsel, the emotional release didn't really come that night.
“I don't really think it happened until probably after the season was over.”
That's an important reminder of what the Piazza home run represented.
Baseball didn't fix anything.
It couldn't bring anyone home.
It couldn't erase the images from September 11.
But baseball could provide a moment.
A moment to cheer.
A moment to come together.
A moment to remember that, despite everything, life would continue.
During our live Q&A, one of the audience members shared his own deeply personal September 11 story, including family members who were first responders and a friend who walked barefoot from downtown Manhattan to Astoria.
It was a powerful reminder that the story of September 11 belongs to everyone who lived through it — and that there are countless stories that will never appear in a documentary.
Another audience member shared how his company had occupied floors in the World Trade Center and lost 13 people that day. He described returning to work the very next day, organizing a new office and simply trying to continue.
Looking back, he realized they had been in total shock.
People would see them, cry and hug them, and they would simply shrug and go back to work.
That story connected directly to what Valentine and Trachsel had been describing.
Everyone was trying to figure out how to move forward.
During the Q&A, we asked both men what they hoped people who were too young to remember September 11 would take away from the story of the Mets and those 11 days.
Valentine's answer was simple and powerful.
“That we were part of the community. Not that we were the Broadway show. We were part of the community.”
“When the community rang the bell, we answered the bell the best that we could.”
Trachsel spoke about the children of those who were killed and the resiliency he witnessed through Tuesday's Children.
“The resiliency that they showed was pretty amazing,” he said.
And that may be the greatest lesson in this story.
The Mets weren't superheroes.
They couldn't solve the tragedy.
They couldn't bring back the people who were lost.
But they could show up.
They could help.
They could stand alongside their city.
They could provide a place for people to rest.
And eventually, they could play baseball.
Twenty-five years later, the details may fade for those who were too young to remember September 11, 2001.
But the people who were there remember.
They remember the smoke over the skyline.
They remember the fire trucks filling the Shea parking lot.
They remember the boots, gloves, food and water.
They remember the nuns with candles.
They remember the bikers asking, “We hear you need some help.”
They remember Bobby Valentine standing on the back of a truck.
They remember Mets and Braves players putting rivalry aside and embracing.
They remember Mike Piazza's home run.
And they remember what it felt like to cheer again.
Baseball didn't heal New York.
New York healed New York.
But for a few moments, baseball gave the city a place to gather, a reason to cheer and a reminder that there was still something worth coming together for.
That is why 11 Days in September is about much more than baseball.
And that is why hearing Bobby Valentine and Steve Trachsel tell their stories, 25 years later, made this live Down on the Korner conversation so powerful.
Sometimes the people who lived the history are the footage.
And sometimes, 25 years later, the most important thing we can do is simply listen.
Here is the full Q/A with Bobby and Steve :
Comments