Remembering 9/11: MLB takes look back

The stories of how Major League Baseball, its players and personnel, reacted to the tragedy of 9/11 drastically pale in comparison to the stories of brave firefighters climbing up the steps of the Twin Towers or emboldened passengers overpowering the hijackers on Flight 93. But they are stories that nonetheless speak to just how much the national pastime was impacted by national tragedy. We share some of them here.

The line drive steamed down the left-field line, a last-chance rocket in a lost season. Maybe this one would fall in. Maybe the two baserunners aboard would scoot home and cut into the 5-1 deficit the Angels faced with two out in the ninth against Arthur Rhodes. Maybe this would be the hit that would spark a satisfying finish to a frustrating year for Tim Salmon.

Nope.

A left fielder named Charles Gipson used his blistering speed to get in position for the diving snag. He made the catch at 10:14 p.m. PT.

Ballgame.

“Are you kidding me?” Salmon thought to himself. “That sums up my year, right there.”

Afterward, Salmon returned to his Orange County home. His good friend and financial advisor, Don Christensen, was in town, and the two stayed up late, with the great Angels outfielder bemoaning his .230 batting average in a season that, following shoulder surgery, never found traction. It was the most miserable year of his career, and, as he told Christensen that night, he couldn’t wait for it to be over.

So in the wee morning hours of Sept. 11, 2001, a flustered Salmon went to sleep, not knowing he had just made the last out of what felt like the last normal night in America.

The debut that wasn’t

“This is getting annoying.”

Ballplayers are creatures of the night, as dictated by the season schedule. A morning phone call is a nuisance. A morning phone call on the day of your Major League debut is a disturbance. And multiple morning phone calls on the day of your debut — even if it’s friends or family members on the other line, trying to wish you good luck — is an invitation to agitation.

Jason Middlebrook had worked so hard and waited for so long to get to this day. Years earlier, he was a promising young right-hander who overwhelmed the opposition in high school in Grass Lake, Mich., pitched for Team USA in the World Junior Baseball Championships and had such an inspiring first season at Stanford that Baseball America named him its Freshman Pitcher of the Year.

And then, sophomore year, his elbow began to hurt. Along came the surgery and the mechanical tweaks aimed at recovering what was lost. Middlebrook caught a break in 1996, when the Padres drafted him and gave him a $755,000 bonus, an unheard-of amount for a ninth-round pick. And for the next five years, he made the long, slow slog toward the Majors, enduring a string of statistical and health setbacks before San Diego finally summoned him in September of 2001. He was, at 26 years old, scheduled to make his debut start on this day, a Tuesday, at Qualcomm Stadium, and all he wanted was some early morning rest.

But that dang phone kept ringing.

Middlebrook finally picked it up. His wife, Wendy, was on the other end in tears.

“Turn on the TV,” she told him, and Middlebrook did as instructed and saw what we all saw.

“Forget my debut,” he thought to himself. “Our lives have just been altered.”

The stalled chase

With the season on hold, so, too, was history.

When Salmon made that final out of Sept. 10, the Mariners — led by an incredible rookie named Ichiro — improved to an astonishing 104-40, dropping their magic number in the American League West to two and maintaining their pace for the most wins in baseball history.

But no run at the record books garnered as much attention as Barry Bonds’ barrage toward Mark McGwire’s three-year-old single-season home run mark.

In the Giants’ final game before the attacks and subsequent postponement, on a Sunday afternoon at Colorado’s Coors Field, Bonds had one of the signature days of his …

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