Sports Then and Now

Joe Andruzzi's brothers were the true heroes.

It’s been a quick eight years since that dreadful day in New York, PA, and DC. It seems like yesterday that the USA realized that we were not untouchable. It’s a day we will always remember where we were and what we were doing. It was this generation’s, Pearl Harbor.

I was working for Comcast at the time. I remember my co-worker saying a small plane hit the World Trade Center. Everyone thought it was a joke or a hoax, but it was a horror soon realized. We congregated in the café to watch CNN.  We saw the second plane hit the Twin Towers. I was in awe and I began to well up.

Panic set in. The radio was tuned into the news. Planes were disappearing on radar. Flying bombs were vanishing. DC. Seattle. New York. Boston. Who was next?

My folks were in Boston. I was freaking out. I couldn’t get a hold of them because the cell lines were jammed. It felt like the end of the world. For some of our brave citizens, police, and firemen it was.

Three days after the country’s worst terrorist attack, I found out I lost a former college classmate, Brian Kinney. We fell out of touch after sophomore year when we both attended UMASS-Lowell.  He died on one the hijacked planes that left Boston.

He was one of my first friends I made in college. I was a shy and timid freshman.  Brian was in some of my classes. I would always see him walking from north to south campus. One day, I picked him up and we struck up a friendship.

He was such a sweet soul.  One amongst the angels now.

The country was brittle and vulnerable. How could life continue? How could sport continue?

That’s what these devils wanted, to disrupt our lives. Make us scared. However, those who lost their lives including my friend, Brian would never allow those cowards to win!

America went on and so did sports like football and baseball.

Everyone wanted New York to win. The Yankees became America’s Team. Red Sox nation, admit it, you were rooting them on. I was.

I attended the Patriots-Jets game on 9/23/01 at Foxboro stadium. My face was painted with a “9/11” on one cheek and “USA” on the other. The Andruzzi brothers, not Joe the Patriots’ player, but his brothers, NY firemen, were saluted as the true heroes. There was not a dry eye in the house.

Joe Gill is a resident blogger for Sports Then and Now. His Cup of Joe column can be read each Tuesday and Friday on Boston Sports Then and Now and occasionally on the national Sports Then and Now site.