“I did not think it was the right decision until Mike hit that baseball,” Rose admitted. “If they would have decreed on the evening of September 11th or the morning of September 12th that ‘this is a nation in shock, in mourning, that needs to recover, it’s late in the season, and we don’t think coming back to play is the right thing to do,’ I’d have been fine with that. My head wasn’t into it at all. I drove to the ballpark that night of September 21st, concerned, worried.
“It was the first time any of us would be in a gathering that size… and we were still looking over our shoulders. In some ways, we still are today. So, I wasn’t sure it was the right call,” Rose continued. “And then Mike hit the homer. And I saw the reaction. That’s when it dawned on me…it wasn’t just the right decision, it was the only decision.”
Rose was a TV voice of the Mets at that point in his broadcasting career, and he remembers executives telling him to “keep everything low key” before the game because it was a solemn occasion.
“With that in mind, when Mike hit the ball, I knew he hit it God knows how many feet. It was a home run off the bat, but I had to play it down, so I said, ‘This one has a chance.’ Mike teases me about that.”
Mike Piazza never won a World Series with the Mets. But he’s honored and beloved like a player who won a championship in New York, and that home run has a lot to do with it. The impact and feeling Piazza gave New Yorkers that night in September 2001 proved as lasting as a championship.
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