While the 2020 season is finally approaching its commencement, Major League Baseball already announced their 2021 schedule. All teams will open their season on April 1. Atlanta will host the All-Star Game.
Many have questioned commissioner Rob Manfred every step of the way from the punishments he handed down to the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox for their sign-stealing controversies to the back-and-forth battle with the player’s union and owners to get any sort of season played in the midst of the pandemic.
But with the announcement of the 2021 schedule, Major League Baseball and Manfred got one thing right.
The Yankees and the Mets will play on Sept. 11 at Citi Field on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Subway Series rivals have never played on Sept. 11 in the last 20 years. Only once have both clubs played home games in New York on that date. In 2014, the Mets hosted the Washington Nationals at Citi Field in Queens while the Yankees hosted the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
One can only imagine the magnitude of emotions leading up to and during that game.
Here’s how they can make it even better.
MLB should take it a step further and make that game the only game on the Sept. 11 schedule.
Mike Piazza, Derek Jeter, and the rest of the respective players from 2001 should all be in attendance to remember the impact they had on life getting somewhat back to normal in the weeks after that fateful day.
While no times have been announced, this must be a primetime game, complete with the blue lights reaching to the sky where the towers stood in the background.
That afternoon, leading up to the game, should include an NYPD vs. FDNY charity softball game.
FOX, ESPN, MLB Network, YES, and SNY should broadcast the game. The wide perspective of the networks’ different analysts will be amazing.
From someone who lives in New Jersey and was able to see the Twin Towers out of his upstairs window, I will never forget that day. I lost three high school classmates on that day and continue to shares the fateful memories of that day with my school-age children.
Baseball was the first sport to start back up post-9/11, and it’s only fitting that a historical game between the pair of New York teams is on the MLB docket.
