From the Bleachers

Often in sports, tragedies take place and people must deal with them. The death of Kansas City Chief football star Derrick Thomas of a blood clot at the age of just 33 was a shock, and nobody will forget when Dale Earnhardt, one of the greatest nascar drivers ever, lost his life in the first race of this year’s season. In sports, many things take place for unexpected reasons, and all of the professional athletes in the sports world today deal with many problems day in and day out.

Last Tuesday, Sept. 11, when the terrorist attacks took place, the sports world was put on hold. But why? I can agree and disagree with why the sports world just stopped.

Please do not mistake me. Being a native of New York and having a good part of my family still living in the area, I was scared. I became extremely shocked that the sports world was put on hold. Once realizing what had just taken place, I thought to myself and saw both sides of the decision.

I felt that canceling the entire sports world was both smart and stupid at the same time. First of all, canceling was the smart thing to do for the safety of all the players. Let’s also not forget that with the canceling of the games, many more fans were put out of danger as well. So, this is a good enough reason to cancel any sporting event at any time.

You could also disagree with many of the prior statements being made. I also felt that with all of the mishaps that happened, the terrorists got what they wanted and more. With everything just dying down, it seemed like the world had stopped, which was exactly what the terrorists wanted. Also with this, the sports fans had nothing to do last week because the world of sports shut down.

Joe Morgan, a retired hall of famer who played with the Cincinnati Reds and is now a Baseball analyst for ESPN, said this about sports. “Sports bring a sense of togetherness to our country, and they should resume once it is both safe and appropriate.” With this, many people will start the healing process of last Tuesday’s tragedy.

I still disagree with the day everything started back up. I feel that if Baseball, Nascar, Football, and other sports had resumed on Sunday, instead of Monday, things would have been better off. Honestly, it would have been a lot easier; for instance, if people wanted to go to a ballpark and interact with others, they would have the opportunity more on Sunday than Monday, when people would be back at work.

I am truly sorry for the happenings of Tuesday, September 11th; I personally will never forget that day as long as I live. Tragedies take place every day to every one of us, but often we, as a country, do not know what is going on in the state next to us. Sports will bring back many of the good memories, and I am sure they will bring back some bad memories too, but at least for now, nobody can say that sports players do not have feelings.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 21 2001. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry