There are nights when a broadcast call becomes more than a call. Sept. 21, 2001 was one of them, because the moment Mike Piazza sent a home run into the night at Shea Stadium, the emotional question around baseball’s return to New York seemed to answer itself.
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Howie Rose reflected on that first game back at Shea Stadium and the uncertainty he felt before he got there. Rose said that on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, he would have been fine if Major League Baseball had decided not to resume play. New York was in shock and mourning, and he believed the decision should have reflected that reality.
Rose described his mindset clearly: “this is a nation in shock, in mourning, that needs to recover, it’s late in the season, and we don’t think coming back to play is the right thing to do.” He later said, “My head wasn’t into it at all,” and remembered driving to Shea Stadium on Sept. 21 “concerned, worried.”
That atmosphere mattered because it was the first time any of those gathered would be in a setting that large after 9/11, and Rose said people were still “looking over our shoulders.” The plan, as he understood it, was to keep everything low key. That detail explains why his famous call was intentionally restrained. Knowing Piazza had crushed the ball off the bat, Rose still said, “This one has a chance.”
Then came the reaction that changed his view. When Piazza hit the homer, Rose saw what it meant in the ballpark and beyond it. “And then Mike hit the homer. And I saw the reaction. That’s when it dawned on me…it wasn’t just the right decision, it was the only decision,” Rose said.
That is what makes Piazza’s home run such a lasting moment in New York sports history. It was not only a clutch swing in the first game back at Shea Stadium after 9/11. It became proof that returning to baseball was part of the city’s recovery, not a distraction from it. Rose’s concern did not vanish overnight, but the emotional response to Piazza’s blast showed why the night mattered in a much larger sense.
More than three years after the fact, and now again on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the memory still carries the same weight. The game offered no simple comfort, but it did offer a shared moment, and that was enough to make the return feel necessary.
