Tuesday, September 11, 2001, began like any other day. In New York City, the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue—the kind of beautiful September morning that would later become inseparable from memories of that day.
I was a high school student in Sykesville, Maryland, arriving late to my second-period Spanish class because choir had run over. When I walked in, the television was on. Something had happened in New York.
Then came an announcement from our principal. I remember hearing the emotion in his voice as he struggled through it, and realizing that whatever was happening was far more serious than I had understood. We were released early from school—by noon, in fact. Somehow, I still had softball practice later.
Sykesville sat only about 40 miles from the Pentagon. By that afternoon, the normally busy skies were eerily empty except for fighter jets overhead.
That contrast has stayed with me for 25 years: a day when the world seemed to stop, while pieces of ordinary life somehow kept moving. The events that brought the country to that standstill had unfolded in less than two hours.
- 8:46 a.m. EST - American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
- 9:03 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
- 9:37 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.
- 9:59 a.m. - The South Tower collapsed.
- 10:03 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew, knowing what had already happened in New York and Washington, fought back against the hijackers. Among them was passenger Todd Beamer, whose famous words, “Let’s roll,” became a symbol of their courage and sacrifice.
- 10:28 a.m. - The North Tower collapsed.
In one hour and 42 minutes, the United States had changed forever. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and aboard the four hijacked aircraft.
There was supposed to be baseball that day. Brad Radke was scheduled to pitch for the Minnesota Twins against Jeff Weaver and the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park. First pitch was set for 7:05 p.m. Eastern, 6:05 p.m. Central. The matchup had already been printed in that morning's newspapers: Radke, 12-9, against Weaver, 11-14. There were 15 Major League Baseball games scheduled across the country. By 2 p.m. EST, all 15 had been called off.
The Twins would not play that night nor would they play the next night, either. Or for the rest of the week. Baseball stopped.
For six days, baseball didn't matter
The Twins had played in Detroit the night before the attacks, defeating the Tigers 3-2 on Sept 10. No one leaving Comerica Park that Monday night could have known that Major League Baseball would not play another game for a week.
The decision to cancel the Sept 11 schedule was quickly extended. Games scheduled through Sept 16 were eventually postponed, with the missed dates moved to the end of the regular season. It was an extraordinary interruption, but there was little question that baseball belonged far down the list of concerns. The attacks had killed thousands. Rescue crews were still digging through the ruins of the World Trade Center. Families were searching for missing loved ones. Americans were still trying to understand what they had witnessed. A box score could wait.
By Sept 16, however, baseball had decided it was time to begin again. Commissioner Bud Selig acknowledged that the suffering continued but said he believed the game could play a small part in "a return to normalcy." Major League Baseball resumed play on Sept 17. The Twins had to wait one more day. On Sept 18, they returned home to Minnesota, and the pitcher waiting for the baseball was the same man who had been scheduled to take it one week earlier. Brad Radke.
Baseball returns to the Metrodome
There were 10,878 people inside the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome that Tuesday night. Before the game, the Twins and Tigers lined the foul lines during a ceremony unlike the ones that ordinarily preceded a September baseball game. A local high school choir sang "God Bless America." A bald eagle was held at home plate. Then came something that had been missing for eight days. Baseball in Minnesota.
At 7:09 p.m. Central, the game began. Radke faced off against Jeff Weaver. Again, the same pitching matchup that had been scheduled for Sept 11. Radke was nothing short of extraordinary. He retired the first 18 Detroit Tigers he faced. Six innings, eighteen batters, and nobody reached base.
The Twins, meanwhile, gave him an early cushion. Minnesota scored twice in the first, three times in the third, twice in the fifth and once more in the sixth. By the time Radke walked back to the mound for the seventh inning, the Twins led 8-0, but the score had become secondary to what Radke was doing. He had a perfect game through six. And when the perfect game ended, the no-hitter remained intact. Radke carried it into the eighth inning.
When Detroit's Shane Halter finally broke through, leading off the inning with a home run, Radke's bid for the first no-hitter of his career ended. Later in the inning, Chris Wakeland hit the first home run of his major-league career, and Radke's night was over. He walked off the mound to a standing ovation.
Radke had thrown 7.2 innings, allowed two hits and two earned runs, struck out eight and walked nobody. He threw 104 pitches, 75 for strikes. The Twins won 8-3 behind 18 hits. Corey Koskie and Cristian Guzman homered. Torii Hunter drove in three runs. Under almost any other circumstances, the story would have been simple. Brad Radke almost threw a no-hitter, but this wasn't any other night. "I don't know how I did it. I don't think anybody's mind was on baseball," Radke said afterward. Catcher A.J. Pierzynski had wanted to see him finish the no-hitter, "It would've meant a lot with all that's been going on," he said.
"I don't think anybody's mind was on baseball.""Brad Radke
That might be the best way to understand baseball's strange place in America during September 2001. It mattered. And compared with everything else, it didn't matter at all.
Baseball couldn't heal America, but it could offer something familiar
No baseball game was going to undo Sept 11. It could not restore the lives that had been lost, rebuild the World Trade Center or erase what Americans had seen on their television screens, but baseball could give people somewhere to go. It could give them something familiar to watch.
It could give them a few hours in which a ball was still 90 feet from one base to the next, three strikes still made an out and the crack of a bat sounded exactly as it had before Sept 11. Yankees manager Joe Torre put it particularly well when his team also returned on Sept 18. "We're not here to save civilization, we're here to do our part and maybe we can subtract from the grief."
Three nights later, baseball's role in that grieving process produced its defining moment. The Mets hosted the Atlanta Braves on Sept 21 in the first professional sporting event held in New York City since the attacks. With New York trailing 2-1 in the eighth inning, Mike Piazza hit a two-run home run that sent 41,235 people at Shea Stadium into an emotional celebration. It became one of the most enduring moments in baseball history—not because a home run somehow healed New York, but because for a few minutes it gave a hurting city permission to cheer again.
Radke's performance three nights earlier never became a national symbol like Piazza's home run. It didn't need to. The return of baseball wasn't happening only in New York. It was happening in Minneapolis, too. It was happening inside a half-empty Metrodome where 10,000+ people watched a pitcher flirt with history on the first night their team had played since the country changed. For a few hours, something felt familiar again.
Brad Radke gets one more turn
There is one final footnote to the story.
The game Radke was supposed to pitch on Sept 11 did eventually get played. The postponed schedule was added to the end of the season, sending the Twins back to Detroit on Oct 2 for the makeup game. This time Jeff Weaver wasn't across from him. Heath Murray started for Detroit. Radke was still on the mound for Minnesota. And this time, he finished the job.
Radke threw a three-hit complete-game shutout, going all nine innings in a 5-0 Twins victory. He allowed two walks, struck out one, and needed only 97 pitches. The Baseball-Reference box score still carries an unusual notation beneath the date:
"Rescheduled From: Sept 11, 2001 (9/11 attack)."
It is a small line buried in a box score from 25 years ago, but it completes Radke's remarkable place in that week of Twins history. He was supposed to take the mound on Sept 11. When Minnesota finally played again seven days later, he retired 18 straight hitters and carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning. When the game originally scheduled for Sept 11 was finally played, Radke threw a shutout.
Twenty-five years later, the statistics remain, but they aren't why Sept 18, 2001, matters. Brad Radke gave Twins fans a brilliant performance that night. More importantly, more than 10,000 people walked into the Metrodome and watched something happen that, for most of their lives, had seemed entirely ordinary: Someone threw a pitch, someone swung a bat, they had something to cheer for. Baseball was back.
And one week after Sept. 11, ordinary itself was something worth cheering for.
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