How 9/11 changed everything and stopped a Cleveland pennant race in its tracks

GuardiansCleveland Police officer Justin Fisher salutes during the national anthem and a moment of silence to remember the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks before a baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Milwaukee Brewers in Cleveland, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Phil Long)APBy Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast, cleveland.comCLEVELAND, Ohio — Twenty-five years ago, a Cleveland baseball beat writer was sitting on a plane at Hopkins Airport, waiting to take off for Kansas City. The Indians were already there, preparing to continue a pennant race. He was headed out to cover it. The plane never took off.“The pilot comes on and said, there’s a broken seat on the, on the plane,” Paul Hoynes recalled on the Cleveland Baseball Talk Podcast. “We’ve all got to get off the plane so we can fix the seat. So we get off the plane.” They re-boarded. The flight still didn’t move. Then came the announcement that changed everything.“Finally the pilot comes on and said, you know, something has happened in New York. The flight has been canceled. The flight has been grounded and you’ve got to get off the plane and leave the airport.”It was September 11, 2001. Walking back through the airport, Hoynes stopped at the bars and restaurants where televisions were replaying footage of the burning towers and planes striking them. His first thought was visceral and immediate.“I was just thinking, this means we’re going to war. The world has just changed dramatically.”It had. And baseball — like virtually everything else — came to a complete stop.The Indians were 82-62 at the time and leading the American League Central. None of that mattered anymore. MLB suspended all games for a week. Players and staff stranded in Kansas City had no flights to catch. They waited in hotels, then eventually boarded buses for the drive back to Cleveland.The schedule consequences were significant and, in retrospect, almost surreal. “Leading the American League Central standings meant nothing,” said Joe Noga, cleveland.com’s Guardians beat reporter. “MLB shut down all the games for a week and, you know, the schedule consequences were kind of substantial for Cleveland. Six games that were road games that were postponed and had to be made up late in the season. They had to play all the way through October 7th.”The Indians eventually returned to the field September 18th at Jacobs Field, beating Kansas City 11-2. But the moment that resonated most broadly came in New York, when President George W. Bush walked to the mound at Yankee Stadium and threw a strike before a roaring crowd. MORE BY CLEVELAND BASEBALL TALK PODCAST“You realize it now more than, than when it happened, I think. You realize how history was unfolding then. You don’t really realize how deep the roots were on that.”Noga framed the anniversary with a perspective that cuts to the heart of what sports means beyond standings and statistics: “September 11th is one of those days every year during the season where we sort of stop and remember that really all of this can just come to an end or come to a halt in an instant.”On the 25th anniversary, two baseball writers paused a conversation about rotation decisions and wild-card math to remember the day the game stopped — and what it meant when it finally started again.This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff.