Looking back, sports did help with recovery after 9/11

As time marches on, memories fade.

We're at a point where basically no one younger than 50 has strong memories of the “Super Bowl Shuffle” and the 1985 Bears. Maybe 35 is the cutoff for Michael Jordan's sixth NBA championship.

And it's probably at least 31 or 32 for anyone to have strong memories of the terror attacks on 9-11-2001.

That event wasn't sports-centric like the pandemic, which basically began with a Utah-Oklahoma City NBA game. But sports did help tell the story of the feelings, the emotions and aftermath of 9/11.

So in the interest of preserving memories, maybe it's worth looking back at September 2001.

Obviously, the country was in shock and basically shut down for a few days. The attacks happened on a Tuesday, which made high school football one of the first regularly scheduled events to take place.

Having been at a game that night, it felt strange, obviously. The fog of the attacks didn't subside for a long time, but to have people sitting in the bleachers, experiencing Friday Night Lights, was a tentative first step toward carrying on for many. Things were not about to feel normal, though this was a nice method for regular activities to resume.

Then there was one of the strangest events I've ever covered. Remember, Major League Baseball shut down for the week, so the Cubs held a workout at an empty Wrigley Field to start getting ready for games to resume.

The Cubs were actually in a playoff race at the time, trailing San Francisco by 1½ games for the wild card on the morning of Sept. 11. The White Sox were too far back but were actually in New York that day, about to begin a series against the Yankees.

Wrigley Field felt so empty that day. There was no one in the stands — an eerie scene that would be repeated in 2020 — and very little traffic on the roads.

A moment that stood out was a plane flying overhead. For basically a week there were no flights. Air traffic was grounded immediately after the attacks. It was unusual to look up and see an airplane. Why did it have clearance to be in the air? Where was it going?

Of course, Sammy Sosa's appearance at the September workout was the news of the day. Maybe he'd already decided to take the field carrying an American flag when play resumed. In the heat of what had happened, it was a very special moment.

Roughly two weeks later, it was time to get back to work and attend Bulls media day, which couldn't have felt more unimportant and meaningless. This was a team that had just won 17 and 15 games the previous two seasons. It was the start of rookie year for Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, the final days of coach Tim Floyd.

With all that was happening in the world, it felt a little defeating to have to go back to chronicling that story. As they say, life moves on.

One personal story involving the Bulls was I actually heard about the 9/11 attacks from legendary public relations chief Tim Hallam. We had a 7-month-old child at the time and simply didn't turn on the television or radio that morning. And this was before texting or Twitter became a thing.

So thinking it was a normal day, I rang up Hallam wondering if a certain player (Eddie Robinson, maybe?) was available for an interview.

“It's been a strange day around here,” was his response.

“Really, why?”

Oh, no reason, just one of the World Trade Center towers collapsed to the ground.

Another Bulls sidebar happened a couple months later. During a game at Dallas, the emergency alarm went off right in the middle of the game. It couldn't have been a more surreal moment, a calm, electronic voice saying, “Emergency, emergency, please evacuate the building.”

It turned out to be nothing, like many fire alarms, but in 2001, you really didn't know.

Overall, sports helped push the rise in patriotism, I thought. Enjoying the return of a college football Saturday or the NFL on Sunday?

It only happens in America. This was the time to really appreciate that fact.