Monday, December 31, 2001
Year in Sports
Not just fun & games anymore
By Mike Bass
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If 1999 was The Year to Look Back in sports (at the 1900s) and 2000 was The Year to Look Ahead (to a new millennium), then 2001 was The Year to Look Within.
Be you casual follower or rabid fan, soccer mom or professional athlete, you were inclined to re-examine the role of sports in your life, if not in our society.
Whether it lasted is debatable.
Our nation mourned after terrorists crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania on Sept.11. Athletic events were called off, deemed inappropriate if not unsafe as the country was in shock.
In Cincinnati, this was the second time our games were at risk.
First came in April, when a white police officer shot and killed African-American teen Timothy Thomas, and riots broke out in the city streets. Curfews were enacted. Events were canceled. Reds games were spared, only because the team was in Chicago.
Five months later, there was no escaping the impact of Sept. 11, no matter where you lived.
Although America went back to its jobs, athletes wondered how they could play at theirs. Others feared crowded stadiums would be hit next. And who wanted to fly? Vinny Testaverde and the New York Jets planned to boycott instead of flying to play at Oakland. In the end, the NFL postponed all games that weekend.
Major League Baseball and other major pro and college sports called off games through the weekend, too.
Some cities even canceled high school games. Not Cincinnati.
The idea was to let kids be kids, for communities to congregate for Friday Night Football and a few hours of sanctuary.
But as college and pro sports resumed the next week, there was a prevailing feeling that maybe now we had sports in greater perspective.
We admitted heroes weren't athletes, but firefighters and police officers. We wrapped ourselves in the flag at sporting events, sang loud and proud as “God Bless America” replaced “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for the seventh-inning stretch, and felt we were helping the healing.
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Year in Sports: Not just fun & games anymore
