Last Monday night the New York Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates played a baseball game at Shea Stadium in New York. In a park that holds 56,000 people – 6,315 showed up. Across town the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox played a game in front of 8,112 fans at Yankee Stadium, which seats 57,500.
The paltry crowds at Major League Baseball games were not confined to those being played in New York.
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That same night in Baltimore, 10,000 tickets went unsold for a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles – one of the few chances that remained to see Cal Ripken, Jr., perhaps the most beloved figure in modern day baseball, play.
It’s not just America’s pastime. About a dozen Broadway shows have closed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Business has been slow at resort areas and restaurants throughout the country.
So where is everybody? Hiding at home, afraid to come out?
Some are no doubt choosing to stay home – closer to family. But others are out at churches and synagogues and other places of worship. Sept. 11, it seems, has done that to people.
On that same Monday evening, when baseball seemed an afterthought, October Devotions at Saint Augustine Church on Mount Pleasant Avenue in Providence packed them in – young and old, men and women.
Fr. Barry Connerton, pastor at Saint Augustine, said the crowd on Monday night and a 20 percent increase in attendance at weekend Mass is directly related to the events of Sept. 11.
“At times like this we tend to turn to absolutes – and what is important in life,” he said. “You realize how fragile life is.”
Fr. Connerton is not alone in recognizing an awakening of spirit.
The Rev. Ann Coburn, rector at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church on the East Side of Providence, is also seeing a sharp increase in the number of people visiting the church.
“People have sought out churches – people that may not have done that for a long time,” she said.
People, said Coburn, are grappling with so many questions – questions with few concrete answers.
“I think the church is a place that deals with that kind of thing naturally,” she said. “People want to think all of this through, they want reassurances. And I think that people who have a faith experience, they tend to deal with this better.”
The Rev. James Curran, of the Holy Cross Church of God in Christ United on Broad Street in Providence, is also seeing new faces – faces he hasn’t seen in a while. They are looking for comfort, for understanding, he said. And they are facing a new reality. They can no longer take their safety for granted.
“You can’t take life for granted,” said Curran. “You’re not guaranteed tomorrow. You’re not guaranteed five minutes from now.”
What has been most heartwarming to Curran has been the breaking down of racial barriers. He does a lot of work with the American Red Cross. He has seen the bikers and corporate executives volunteering side by side.
“It seems that part of the motivation behind the attacks was to make the country weaker, but it has done just the opposite,” he said.
People will go back to ball games, eventually. They will return to the movies and to restaurants and resorts. In time we will see fewer American flags adorning our homes and businesses. But that doesn’t mean we cannot come out of this better, wiser.
What seemed so important to all of us prior to Sept. 11 just doesn’t seem so important anymore.
So it should come as no surprise that for now at least, that Americans are balking at baseball. There are more important places to be.
