Jason Kendall was relaxing at his home in Pittsburgh’s southwest suburbs when his phone rang about 9 a.m. on a sunny, seasonal, late-summer Tuesday.
Seeing it was his brother calling, the then-Pittsburgh Pirates star catcher instinctively knew something was amiss.
“You know how you get that phone call early enough, and you’re kind of like, ‘Oh, (crap),’ ” Kendall recalled recently. “My brother is in California, so it’s 6 o’clock in the morning there.”
About a half-hour up Interstate 79 at about the same time, Kendall’s teammate, Kevin Young, was at home when he was awoken by a similar call from a friend almost 1,000 miles to the west.
“ ‘Turn on the TV,’ ” Young’s friend in Kansas City told him.
Then-Pitt football coach Walt Harris was running an offensive staff meeting from a sprawling room inside the South Side facility the university shares with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Longtime program staffer Chris LaSala entered and politely but urgently interrupted.
“He said, ‘They’re blowing up the World Trade Center in New York,’ ” Harris said, “I go, ‘What?!’ ”
“At that moment,” LaSala said recently, “football became so irrelevant. It just became the safety of our players and safety of our families.”
Anyone who was alive on Sept. 11, 2001, can relate. Most can recall with precise detail where they were when they learned of our country’s deadliest terrorist attacks — the emotions that manifested in the pits of their stomachs, the terrifying sense of uncertainty of what might come next.
The world of Pittsburgh sports was no different in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington and the crash at a field in quiet Stonycreek Township in Somerset County. Local pro, college and high school teams had their seasons — and lives — disrupted.
As the 20th anniversary of that day approaches, players, coaches and staff members from those teams spoke with the Tribune-Review to share their recollections.
Close to home
The much-anticipated, unofficial grand opening for Heinz Field was days away. Then-Steelers Vice President Art Rooney II was in a meeting room inside the new $281 million facility on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The agenda was last-minute prep for the stadium’s regular-season Steelers debut scheduled for Sept. 16.
Similar to the Pitt coaches’ meeting on the other side of town, this one was interrupted by someone walking in.
“I do remember at one point we heard that there was another plane in the air that was somewhere around Pennsylvania,” said Rooney, whose grandfather founded the Steelers. “So we decided to shut down Heinz Field, send everybody home.”
The plane Rooney heard about was United Flight 93, which had been hijacked en route to San Francisco and was headed toward Washington, D.C. Passengers and crew would disrupt the hijackers’ plans, and the aircraft was flown into a rural field.
After getting the call from his brother, a longtime San Francisco Giants scout, Kendall left home to get something to eat. He looked up at clear sky.
“This is one of those things, even though I swear to you it happened, I can’t tell you if it’s true or not,” Kendall said. “Talking to him, I say, ‘Mike, I swear I am looking at an airplane above me right now. I am not lying. Maybe it’s one of the last ones. I don’t know.’
“It was really eerie. Was that the one that went down in Pennsylvania? The one where the heroes came and took it over? I don’t know if it was or was not. I don’t know. Even when I look back on it now, I can’t say. But I was going to get a bagel or something, and who knows what was going on up above my head?”
High school teams play on
As the crow flies, Kendall was maybe 10 miles from Pittsburgh International Airport. At nearby West Allegheny High School, Tyler Palko was in the athletics office. A star senior quarterback for the defending WPIAL Class AAA champions, Palko followed faculty and staff members as they hurried into a board room with a TV to keep abreast of what was going on.
“It was really hard to process as a young kid,” said Palko, who later played at Pitt and in the NFL. “I don’t really remember having a point of reference. An airplane is flying into buildings? What the (heck) is going on?”
Palko’s father, Bob, then the West Allegheny coach, also worked as dean of students. He remembered watching live on TV as the second plane hit the second tower in New York.
“Our school being so close to the airport, you didn’t know what to do,” Bob Palko said. “Where is the safest place for the kids? I remember parents coming to get their kids. It was true panic, almost chaotic.”
With a showdown against fellow WPIAL powerhouse Thomas Jefferson just three days away, Palko and TJ coach Bill Cherpak had a decision to make.
Should they play?
“I knew that Billy and I think the same way,” Bob Palko said, “so we knew we needed to show the solidarity to be together.
“We knew had to do something to show everybody that we’re going to show how strong we are, how strong the country is.”
A welcome distraction
Cherpak said his players told him they didn’t want to cancel the game. West Allegheny’s captains met. They, too, wanted to play.
“We wanted to do something to take our minds off of everything,” Tyler Palko said. “We wanted to for the community. West Allegheny, when we were there, everybody came to the games. If you were going to rob a bank there, you’d do it on a Friday night.”
On this occasion, it was a Saturday night — kickoff delayed a day in observance of a national Day of Prayer and Remembrance.
Preparing for the game was a challenge. Thomas Jefferson did not have a full practice all week because its school’s facilities were ordered closed and off-limits.
“We had a walkthrough at one of our kids’ houses,” Cherpak said. “His yard was a couple acres. The varsity kids went to his house and did this walkthrough in his yard.”
A pregame ceremony featured teams lined up on opposite goal lines as their bands played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and sang “God Bless America” a cappella. Players and others from both schools met at midfield and shook hands.
“There was a lot of unity at that point,” Cherpak said.
The game pitted a pair of programs that had combined to win 17 WPIAL titles in 24 years. Each was ranked in Class AAA’s top four. The quality of play, though, didn’t necessarily reflect that.
Thomas Jefferson scored twice off Palko turnovers in a 13-9 win over the eventual WPIAL champs.
“That anthem and the ‘God Bless America’ (presentation), it hit me at a different level,” Tyler Palko said. “It was just a really hard day.
“What I remember about that game, it was almost like an out-of-body experience.”
Chaz Palla | Tribune-Review
West Allegheny’s Dave Hawkins (24) and Manny Rojas drop Thomas Jefferson’s Jon Grager for a first-quarter loss Sept. 15, 2001.
Sports at a standstill
While some programs across the WPIAL played on, college and pro sports nationwide were at a standstill the weekend after 9/11. The Big East was among the first major sports entities to call off games, idling Pitt.
Slowly, other conferences followed. Penn State had a rare Thursday night game scheduled, at Virginia. Like Pitt’s Saturday scheduled home game against Alabama-Birmingham, it was moved to Dec. 1 to close the regular season.
The NFL, too, ultimately decided to postpone all of its Week 2 games to a weekend tacked on to the end of the regular season in January. It was a massive logistical undertaking to move the date of a Super Bowl, but there was another consideration in pushing back an entire week’s worth of games: Some across the NFL felt it was best to play on.
Rooney was on conference calls that week with his father, the late Dan Rooney, league commissioner Paul Tagliabue and representatives from ownership of the NFL’s other teams.
“There certainly were some that were saying, ‘We can’t let (the terrorists) do this,’ ” Rooney recalled. “‘If we don’t play, they win.’ That kind of attitude. At the end of the day, I think the right decision was made not to play that weekend. We needed to just let everybody keep recovering from it.”
Steelers visit Shanksville
With a bye week previously scheduled for Sept. 23, the Steelers gave their players several days off and allowed them to travel home to family if they desired. But there was one voluntary team event: a trip to a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the Flight 93 victims in Somerset on that Friday.
Members of the Rooney family, then-coach Bill Cowher, several players and other members of the organization traveled by bus.
“The prayer service was really emotional,” Rooney said. “It hit home.”
At its conclusion, some of the family members of the deceased who had recognized them approached the Steelers contingent. Rooney remembers how the family of crash victim Louis J. Nacke II told Rooney the 42-year-old Nacke had been a Steelers fan since spending part of his childhood in Penn Hills.
Two months later, the Nacke family were guests in the Heinz Field owners’ box. Four years after that, the Steelers afforded Nacke’s brother, Kenny, the chance to purchase a ticket to Super Bowl XL.
Back on the field
The Steelers’ regular-season christening of Heinz Field was delayed by three weeks, to Oct. 7. They defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, 16-7. That would be part of a five-game winning streak that followed their 20-day layoff. The Steelers went on to win 14 of their next 16 en route to the AFC championship game.
Chaz Palla | Tribune-Review
Steelers fans wave American flags after the president spoke on the Jumbotron during halftime at the Steelers-Bengals game Oct. 7, 2001, at Heinz Field.
It was quite a turnaround for a team that, two days before 9/11, had lost 21-3 at Jacksonville. The day before, Pitt had suffered an even more humbling loss, to FBS newcomer South Florida. The Panthers began the 2001 season 1-5 but, like the Steelers, rebounded impressively. They won their final five, including the Tangerine Bowl over a Philip Rivers-led N.C. State team.
“That year was really one of the great experiences I had as a head coach,” Harris said, “watching our team grow.”
Chaz Palla | Tribune-Review
A police officer waves his hat while holding a gigantic American flag spread across Heinz Field on Sept. 27, 2001, during a pregame ceremony before the Pitt-Miami football game.
Once relief set in with the knowledge that all players and their families were safe — offensive tackle Rob Petitti’s father, Bob, worked in the World Trade Center but had escaped — Pitt was able to turn that week into a turning point for its season.
Harris said the lack of game-planning meetings meant Pitt’s starting-caliber players were invited to watch the program’s weekly Thursday scrimmage of walk-ons and others buried on the depth chart.
The younger players, Harris said, were on their details in an effort to impress their teammates. The starters and other veterans hooted and hollered in support of their peers.
The scrimmage galvanized and unburdened the team, Harris said.
“ ‘This is what we’ve been missing,’ ” Harris remembered thinking. “Here we have this scrimmage in practice that our guys were going crazy about. After all the scariness of everything that happened, once everyone was accounted for and supported properly, really, (the unscheduled idle week) turned into a very positive (season finish) for us.”
Pirates take weeklong break
Unlike the Steelers and Pitt, the Pirates experienced no such bump. They lost six consecutive games and 12 of their final 19 after a weeklong MLB hiatus to finish with 100 losses. It was their ninth consecutive losing season.
The Pirates were scheduled to play the New York Mets on Sept. 11 at PNC Park. The Mets learned of the tragedy while at a Downtown Pittsburgh hotel, and they bused back to New York that day. MLB ultimately postponed six days’ worth of games. Like the NFL, it added them to the end of the season.
As chance would have it, though, the Pirates were scheduled to play at the Mets on the day of MLB’s return. But with Shea Stadium being used as a staging area in the recovery efforts, the schedule was flipped with the Mets coming to Pittsburgh on Sept. 17 and the Pirates playing in New York on Oct. 1.
^
Chaz Palla | Tribune-Review
Mets manager Bobby Valentine wipes his eyes during the playing of “God Bless America” before a game against the Pirates on Sept. 17, 2001, at PNC Park. It was the first night back since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Accounts of the Sept. 17 game reference a somber eeriness in the stands and on the field at PNC Park. The difficulty in achieving focus was exhibited by the typically sure-gloved Young, who, during the second inning, lapsed in miscalculating the number of outs. He began to trot off the field after recording the second out.
“That, in a nutshell, was where all the players’ (heads) were at at that specific time,” Young said.
The Mets won 4-1 thanks to a three-run ninth inning. Fittingly, it was John Franco — a native of New York City in his 12th season with the team — getting the win.
“It was like, whatever (the result), who cares?” Kendall said. “It was without a doubt the hardest game I ever had to catch.”
AP
The Pittsburgh skyline is seen in the distance beyond the Pittsburgh Pirates as they line up along the third base line and bow their heads in a moment of silence honoring the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks before a game against the New York Mets on Monday, Sept. 17, 2001.
MLB shuts down
MLB’s postponements of games came in phases: first, any games played Sept. 11-13, then the league announced Sept. 13 it was postponing that coming weekend’s games.
Earlier that day, the Pirates had packed chartered buses and set out for Chicago. Air travel still was shut down, and there had been no announcement yet regarding the next day’s scheduled afternoon game against the Cubs.
“We were all kind of like, ‘Why are we doing this? We know they are going to cancel it,’ ” pitcher Todd Ritchie said. “But it was our job, so we did it.”
Young’s phone rang roughly halfway into the trip while on the Ohio Turnpike. He was the team’s MLB Players Association representative. It was a union conference call.
“They said (MLB) was being shut down for the weekend,” said Jim Trdinich, a Pirates employee for three decades who now serves as director of baseball communications. “So we turned around and came back.”
Three weeks later, with normalcy returning, the team was able to take a plane on its rescheduled trip to Queens to play the Mets. Many Pirates took some down time to venture over to Manhattan.
“Everything was still smoldering,” Ritchie said of the World Trade Center site, “and it was a crazy, weird feeling to be there knowing what had happened.”
Trdinich recalled the thick layer of ash and soot covering everything.
“I vividly remember walking past a Gap and looking in there,” he said, “and dust was all over these sweaters and pants.
“I couldn’t imagine or fathom being there when it happened.”
Lasting effects
Few could. Nor could anyone at that time imagine the new world that awaited — one that included security lines at airports, metal detectors at stadiums and mandatory checks of, for example, scanned IDs for even the most recognizable of athletes.
The three-week delay in opening Heinz Field for a regular-season game afforded the Steelers time to acquire and install a never-before-needed security measure that endures 20 years later.
“We managed to acquire these big, heavy, concrete planters,” Rooney said, “that we put around the stadium as sort of buffers for vehicles that couldn’t run into the stadium.
“Those are the kind of things we were not concerned with when we were designing and opening the stadium. All of a sudden, you’re trying to find those kinds of things … and adjusting to a whole new environment.
“Overnight, it became a different world.”
Chris Adamski is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Chris by email at cadamski@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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