View From Bennett Avenue

There were a number of television specials this past weekend concerning the role sports played in helping New York City and the nation heal 10 years ago. As I continue to mourn friends lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center, I wonder if that was truly the case.

For one thing, the tragedy that we label 9-11 was not a one-day affair. The attacks did take place on that day but for many of the families touched by the tragedy, the bad news was stretched over a period of weeks if not months. That the Mets won that first game back after the attacks was great and that the Yankees reached and nearly won the World Series was special too, but I am unsure if those games really helped heal the people truly affected by the events of 9-11.

Take my friend Vinnie Kane, a firefighter who died that day. By the next morning we heard that he was one of nine members of his house who did not return home that day. Remember, there was some hope that a survivor or two could be found. So for a few days his family waited. But by the weekend that slim bit of hope had to have been dashed. Then the Kanes had to squeeze his funeral into the busy schedule for both firefighters and their community out on the Rockaways that was particularly hard hit. The mass took place in early October just as the rest of the city was beginning to get back to normal. But in November, some part of Vin was found at the site and his family then "laid him to rest." Even if Vin and the Kane family were huge sports fans, I do not know how meaningless baseball or football games could have really helped his family through weeks of news. mostly bad, and weeks of mourning and suffering. And I also know that New York City would have recovered whether or not Mike Piazza hit that home run, even if it was pretty cool at the time.

You see I feel that the opposite is more true. That important events like 9-11 put everything, like our love for sports, into perspective. Friends and family are what matters. The old Paul Guido would have been frustrated about how pathetic Notre Dame and the New York Giants looked this weekend. But being that those games were wrapped around a picnic to honor Vinnie on Saturday and a trip to his old firehouse on Sunday, I was fine. After all, there are always more games or seasons in sports. In life, that is not always the case.