ATLANTA — Twenty-five years ago Friday, the Phillies woke up here to a country under attack. Larry Bowa was in bed at the team’s Marriott when his daughter called on Sept. 11, 2001. She told him to turn on the television. The Phillies had been playing meaningful September baseball, preparing to face the Braves. As Bowa watched the screen, he initially thought he had found a movie. Hijackers had flown two passenger planes into the World Trade Center. Another struck the Pentagon. A fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back. The attacks killed 2,977 people, leaving families searching for loved ones and a nation unsure what might happen next. For the Phillies’ manager, thoughts quickly turned to the people his players could not reach in person. “All our team was in Atlanta. Their family was here in Philadelphia,” Bowa told NBC Sports Philadelphia. “I can’t imagine what they went through.” Joe Torre was home outside Manhattan when a car service called about a fundraiser he was scheduled to attend in the city that afternoon. “I guess it’s canceled, right?” the driver asked him. “I said, ‘What are you talking about?'” Torre recalled. “I turned on the TV, and I saw what he was talking about.” The Yankees manager began accounting for his family. His 5-year-old daughter was attending her first day of kindergarten. His son worked in the financial industry. His sister-in-law was an American Airlines flight attendant. He did not immediately know where everyone was or whether they were safe. “Everything is pretty vivid about that day,” Torre said. “But it was numbing.” Torre had grown up watching war movies in which the destruction always happened somewhere else, on someone else’s land. “It was never on our home base,” he said. “It was just such an invasion and so frightening.” The National Pastime no longer felt important. “All of a sudden, baseball’s on the back burner,” Torre said. Twenty-five years later, the questions Bowa, Torre and their players faced remain part of how they remember that September. When was it right to play again? What could a baseball game possibly offer families waiting for news? With air travel disrupted and games postponed, the Phillies stayed in Atlanta before boarding a bus to Cincinnati. Their next series was eventually called off, too. They later secured a flight home, but returning to Philadelphia did not settle the question of whether everyone was ready to play. Bowa remembers players telling him they wanted to stop. Known for his intensity, he found himself setting aside all the expectations that usually came with putting on a uniform. “Whatever your feelings are, whatever your wife’s feelings are, whatever your kids’ feelings are, if they don’t think you should play, all you gotta do is tell me,” he recalled telling them. “No one’s gonna hold anything against you.” Torre was having similar conversations. Some Yankees players had already sent their families home because the school year was beginning. Others were trying to reach relatives in and around New York. “It was a lot to think about and a lot to digest,” Torre said. “But it was still surreal.” As rescue workers searched the wreckage in Lower Manhattan and families waited for answers, Torre also tried to understand whether his team had any place in the city’s grief. In the days after the attacks, Yankees players and coaches visited the Javits Center, where responders from outside the city were staying, and St. Vincent’s Hospital. Torre remembered seeing firefighters being treated for smoke inhalation, but none of the survivors from the towers they had hoped to meet. The group then went to an armory serving as a support center for families of the missing. People were gathered behind low partitions with counselors and clergy. Torre worried the Yankees would be intruding on something too personal. Then one family called them over. “Bernie Williams, my center fielder, went up to this woman,” Torre said. “He says, ‘I don’t know what to say, but you look like you need a hug.'” Other families began approaching. Some carried photographs of missing loved ones wearing Yankees jerseys or caps. For Torre, the connection between a baseball team and the people who followed it had never been clearer. “It was really at that point in time that I said, ‘Okay, we do have something to do,'” he said. Torre called it the club’s responsibility. “We’re not simply playing a game,” he said. “We have a responsibility to go out there and bust our tails.” Back in Philadelphia, Bowa’s players had chosen to take the field together. That did not erase his doubts. “I don’t even know when we played if it was the right time,” he said. Major League Baseball resumed its schedule on Sept. 17, six days after the attacks. The Braves visited Veterans Stadium, bringing together the same clubs that had been unable to play in Atlanta. Harry Kalas acknowledged the weight of the moment as he welcomed viewers back. “Sports has always been a diversion from our everyday problems, and in this case, from a national tragedy,” he said in his broadcast introduction. For Bowa, even the familiar rituals sounded different. He listened more closely to the words of the national anthem. The normal separation between fans, players and opposing teams seemed to disappear. “I can literally tell you right now, I didn’t care who won or lost,” Bowa said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever had that kind of feeling.” Scott Rolen homered twice off Greg Maddux. After the second, Bowa urged him to step out of the dugout and acknowledge the crowd. Rolen initially resisted, concerned that tipping his cap could be viewed as showing up the Braves. “I said, ‘Scotty, this is something different,'” Bowa recalled. Rolen stepped out and raised his helmet. The Yankees returned in Chicago against the White Sox. Torre saw signs in the stands expressing love and support for New York, a city that opposing fans would ordinarily take pleasure in rooting against. He told his players that the interlocking NY on their caps represented more than the Yankees. “It represented the city of New York and beyond,” Torre said. Where Bowa found himself caring less about the outcome, Torre felt a greater obligation in the effort. People had come to watch while carrying unimaginable pain. The Yankees could not relieve it, but they could give them their complete attention for a few hours. “We’re going out on the field, but we have to give our best every minute of every game,” Torre told his players. Even winning brought discomfort. As the Yankees advanced through the postseason, Torre and his players did not pop champagne bottles. They struggled with how to celebrate while so many people around them were grieving. “We just didn’t think it was our right to celebrate something at this time, even though we were certainly happy about winning,” he said. The relationship between New York’s teams and those affected by the attacks continued long after the 2001 season ended. In 2013, Zack Wheeler visited the Manhattan firehouse housing Engine 54, Ladder 4 and Battalion 9 while pitching for the Mets. The firehouse had lost 15 men on Sept. 11, more than any other FDNY firehouse. The firefighters welcomed the players and cooked them lunch. Wheeler still remembers the bruschetta, which he calls probably the best he has ever had. He remembers something else more clearly. “You walk in there, and their garage bay is just a memorial right there,” Wheeler said. “It hits your feelings. It hits your heart.” The Mets’ visit could not change what the firefighters had lost. Wheeler hoped it could at least offer a brief escape. “It was really cool to be able to go to a firehouse that lost some people and connect with them and bring them happiness or a smile,” he said. Wheeler later visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum with Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud and manager Terry Collins. Walking through the museum made the history feel different from anything he had experienced from a distance. “I don’t think you really truly get it in your body and mind until you visit a place like that,” Wheeler said. Being inside spaces directly affected by the attacks made him think about the people who entered the towers while others were trying to escape. “It kind of makes you realize a lot of sacrifices that a lot of people made that day,” he said. Now Wheeler and another Phillies team will be in Atlanta on Sept. 11. For Bowa, the date still returns him to the phone call from his daughter, the television in his hotel room and the fear his players carried for their families hundreds of miles away. He thinks about the ordinary goodbyes that morning. “Some of them took their kids to school, and they never got to see their dad or their mom after that,” Bowa said. “That’s stuck in my head forever and ever.” ...read more read less