A week in September

Where did you turn this morning? To the box scores? Or did you linger on the date and ponder the passage of time? Did you think back to that day a year ago -- where were you, then? Or back further to the world we left behind?

It's odd, on this grim anniversary, so much public cogitation on such private matters. How does this time, a year ago, echo in your thoughts? And where did you go from there?

Sept. 13, 2001, morning: I am at the lower end of Union Square Park in Manhattan, a mile-and-a-half north of that awful smoking chasm. You smell it when the wind blows. The park is a memorial already, papered everywhere with posters of the missing. Photos and bouquets of flowers dot the lawn, and the walkways are covered with great sheets of paper upon which people write. The cell phone rings. My editor. We are going to put out the magazine this week, it seems. There's work to do.

Sept. 13, 2001, afternoon: I am at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, on the West Side of Manhattan. People have swarmed here to volunteer. Many hundreds of us have formed a long thick line, hoping to sign up and help out. So many people have come and the ranks of workers are already swollen. The organizers take your name and then later -- hours and days later -- they call you. My cell phone rings when I'm near the head of the line. It's Wayne Gretzky, returning my call. I'm going to interview him for a story on Ace Bailey, a teammate and mentor of Gretzky's on the old Edmonton Oilers. Bailey, an L.A. Kings scout, died aboard United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center's south tower. I explain where I am. "Is there any chance we could talk in an hour when I'm back at my apartment?" I ask.

SI Writers Phil Taylor: On the mend Mike Fish: Playing it safe at venues Kostya Kennedy: A week in Sept. John Donovan: From horror, hope Features 9/11 Faces: For love of the game In Their Words: 9/11 Remembered Flashbacks Frank Deford: Let the games go on Richard Hoffer: A break in the action Rick Reilly: Four of a kind Peter King: Tagliabue on the spot McCallum & Wertheim: War games Multimedia Photo Gallery: Stars & Stripes forever Photo Gallery: Unflagging return

Gretzky chuckles. "I don't know," he says. "Another writer might get to me first." Then he adds gently, "Of course I'll call you back."

When we do talk, it takes a long while before we begin the actual interview. Wayne wants to hear more about New York, its state and mood. He lived here, of course, raised his kids here for several years when he played for the Rangers. As we talk, there is nothing about Gretzky's responses that suggest he was the greatest hockey player of all time. At that time, he is just a man, among his private emotions, ruminating about a city and a people that had so recently embraced him.

Then we talk about Ace Bailey.

Sept. 14, 2001, morning: The Gretzky piece is finished. I drive up to the New York Rangers training facility. The Rangers train in Rye, N.Y., maybe 15 miles north of the city, in an ice rink that's part of an amusement park called The Rye Playland. From the top of the Ferris wheel, I am told, you could clearly see the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Today, the wind is coming strong off Long Island Sound, and in the parking lot several car windshields are covered with what coach Ron Low would describe as, "a weird, white paste, a silt or something that must have come from down there."

Before practice, captain Mark Messier gathers the team in a circle on the ice and his teammates in a moment of quiet. They are kneeling, heads bowed. It is a subdued practice, without the usual shouts and guffaws of the preseason. Afterward, I talk to Low and several players about the morning of Sept. 11, about where they were when. Theo Fleury saw the second plane hit the south tower. I talk for many minutes with forward Michal Grosek, who lives on 50th street, and who also had a view of the towers from his rooftop. His toddler son has a thing for fire engines, and every day in early September he and his boy would go by the local fire company. Little Grosek would try on helmets, gaze up at the big red trucks -- and the fireman would muss his hair. "We knew those guys a in real, personal way," Grosek says. "I mean, we saw them every day. And it wasn't just that -- they made an impression on my baby, you know. My son would talk about them all the time. And now all of those guys? They're dead. All of them, just gone. What am I supposed to say to my son? What am I supposed to do? We're supposed to come here and play hockey three days later? I don't know."

Sept. 18, 2001: Sports Illustrated, with its cover line: The Week that Sports Stood Still, appears on the newsstands. Gretzky's team, the Coyotes, is beginning its preseason games. So are the Rangers, and Grosek. Has it only been a week, I wonder?

Where do we go from here?

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides every Wednesday at CNNSI.com.

 

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