September 17, 2001 Tonight, the Fightin' Phils took on the Atlanta Braves in the first Major League Baseball game since the tragedy. Life returns to normal in little ways. Planes fly overhead again. I don't cry every time I think of New York or Washington or the planes or all those poor people. Major League Baseball is played again. This weekend, when we heard that the Phillies would be playing tonight, I turned to Holden and said, "I want to go." But, really, that wasn't quite the truth. I didn't simply want to go, I had to go. I needed to be at that game; needed to be with the crowd singing the National Anthem. On Friday, I had attended an interfaith prayer service at University A. We stood in the rain, huddled under umbrellas, and said the Kaddish and sang hymns and ended with "Let There Be Peace on Earth" and it was moving and valuable and worthwhile but afterward, I still felt empty. Perhaps because my spirituality springs from a different place than most people's. Instead, what I wanted -- what I knew I needed -- rather than a prayer service, was to be with a big group of people, with my fellow Americans, and to proclaim my love for my country. I would have gone to that Phillies' game if I had to walk to the Vet. When we pulled into the Vet parking lot, there was a man collecting donations for VA hospitals. Holden gave him a few dollars and, in exchange, he gave us two tiny paper flags. The flags were attached to toothpicks. I stuck them in my pigtails as we walked towards the stadium and the statue of Connie Mack where we were meeting Pat. Philadelphia is a notoriously apathetic town when it comes to baseball. Even with the Phillies in first place for so much of this season, most home games only got turnouts of 12,000 people. Back in June, I thought that 20,000 was a lot. But tonight there were people lined up, waiting, from the entrance gates to the bottoms of the stadium's access ramps. Everyone was wearing red, white, and blue. Girls had flags stuck in their ponytails (like I had in my pigtails) and guys had them in their baseball caps. Every so often, a man would walk by waving a large flag, trailed by two or three little boys. The woman in front of us had American flags painted on her nails. A plane flew overhead, coming in low because it was beginning its descent into Philadelphia International. Every single person stopped and watched that plane until it was out of sight. They handed out more flags when we went into the stadium. Holden stuck his in his shirt pocket, so it poked out. I threaded mine in my hair and Pat put his in his hat. We had general admission seats so we climbed up, up, up to the 700 level where we could see the Philadelphia skyline twinkling brightly in the distance. It was beautiful, as always, but we couldn't look for long. The glass towers of Liberty Place are too reminiscent. The stadium was fuller than I had ever seen it. Even the general admission section was filling up. We waited for the game to begin, watching the people filing to their seats. Moms and Dads with little children; an elderly man that Holden and I have seen before, sitting alone at other games, now with his son; groups of teenagers; gatherings of buddies; the three of us. All kinds of people, different in every regard, except for the fact that we were all Americans looking for solace in our nation's pasttime. Before the game, a high school wind ensemble played patriotic tunes. They filed out onto the infield in their black pants and stiff-collared white shirts. The voice of the Phillies' announcer rang over the loudspeakers. They were dedicating this performance to an alumnus who was killed in the Trade Center attack. The kids launched into the theme from Rocky. Technically, it wasn't very good -- stilted and choppy -- after all, they were high schoolers and I would venture a guess that they didn't have much rehearsal time on these songs -- but the crowd went wild just the same. Just the simple, innocent idea that this little band of fifteen- and sixteen-year-old trumpet and trombone players would play the song that never fails to unite Philadelphians was enough. Overhead, seagulls wheeled in the wind. I watched them circle white against blue sky, wondering why there were so many clustered together. It dawned on me that they must have been hungry. The Vet has stood silent for a week. There have been no crowds of happy, laughing people, eating hot dogs and crackerjacks and dropping scraps for the birds to scavenge. At 7 o'clock, three Marines marched onto the field, the middle man carrying the American flag. They had not been announced; they were probably moving towards their places for the pre-game program. This made no difference to the crowd. A ripple of applause started to fan out through the stadium as, one by one, people saw the flag. Then the whole of Veteran's Stadium was on its feet, cheering, clapping, chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!," waving our miniature versions of the flag we saw before us, bright against the green grass of the field. I felt as if I were being lifted up, carried on the swell of the crowd and inside, I felt something come together a little, like a torn piece of paper beginning to be mended. I cheered and clapped with everyone else and the tears were running down my face and the faces of everyone around me. Even though they had a special tribute planned, the Phillies announcer let the crowd pour out its feelings. When the cheering finally ebbed away, he asked everyone to observe a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the tragedy. As loud, as raucous as the atmosphere at the Vet had been only a moment before, now it was utterly still, completely quiet. We all stood together, heads bowed, in silence, thinking of those who were lost. But when the moment faded away, the crowd burst forth again, cheering and chanting, sending our voices out into the sky, making sure that the universe heard that we are still here; we are wounded, we are hurt, we are scared, but we are not destroyed and we will rise again from this sadness and destruction. The planned tribute was as moving as the spontaneous one that had just taken place. They started with a video tribute to America, accompanied by Lee Greenwood's God Bless the U.S.A. When we were kids, Holly and I loved that song. Holly got the album for Christmas. We used to sing "God Bless the U.S.A." at the top of our lungs. Of course, it was always sung with a sort of smirk, a tongue-in-cheek acknowlegement of its corniness. But tonight, as I watched images of my country flicker across the Fanavision at Vet Stadium, I sang "God Bless the U.S.A." wholeheartedly without a trace of a smirk. And I wept. I wept not only for my country and for the people who lost their lives in this tragedy, but also for my self and my sister, for the children we used to be when we sang along with Lee Greenwood, and for a sense of innocence and invulnerability that we will never be able to recapture, that my children will never know. The video ended with a shot of the World Trade Center, the towers proudly reflecting the sun. It's still so hard to believe that they are gone. Down on the field, the Phillies and the Braves were lined up on the baselines, gazing up at the video screen. They were crying right along with the fans in the stands. Because at this moment, they were no different than us. We were all Americans, coming together to give release to our feelings and to declare our love for our country. I am not usually this patriotic, but it meant the world to me to be there at the Vet, singing God Bless America and the Star Spangled Banner, surrounded by other Americans. People who are just as sad and scared as I am but who, like me, are not beaten. The game that followed the tribute was amazing, a continuation of the outpouring of support and community. When Scott Rolen hit his first home run in the bottom of the second, we were all on our feet, cheering and clapping and we weren't just cheering for Scott and his game-tying homer, but for ourselves as well. Rolen hit another home run later in the game and after it was all over, and the Phils had won, we were on our feet again, for Rolen, for the Phils, for baseball, for America. Before the game, people were debating whether baseball had anything valuable to offer America in the wake of the tragedy. The general consensus was that a return to baseball would be a return to some semblance of normality, a chance for fans to take their minds off the past week and to lose themselves in a game. This wasn't what happened. This baseball game was a chance for people to come together as Americans and to release some of the pent up feelings that we've been carrying around for the past week. Since last Tuesday, everyone has been walking around, trying to hold it together -- to keep all of the anger, the fear, the sadness under control. The game fulfilled the need for community that we've all be carrying around with us and it gave us an opportunity to share our feelings and to see that we are not alone, that we are all standing together in this, and that we have the support of every other person in that stadium and every other American. We didn't forget what happened when we were watching that game, we remembered and we shouted it to the sky.