John McLaren stopped in the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel in Anaheim and couldn’t believe what he saw on TV. One tower of the World Trade Center in New York was ablaze, and soon the other turned into an inferno when an airliner crashed into it.
“What I saw on TV was total chaos,” McLaren said. “It was beyond belief.”
Six years ago today, McLaren was the Mariners’ bench coach enjoying the team’s spectacular 2001 season when baseball became insignificant because of the terrorist attacks on the East Coast.
“I always thought we were so secure here in the United States,” said McLaren, now the Mariners’ manager. “For someone to attack us with our own planes, it was an awful feeling.”
The attacks occurred while the Mariners were in Anaheim preparing to play the second game of a series against the Angels. The season was suspended for a week and, with air space closed in the U.S., the Mariners were stranded in Southern California for several days before their flight to Seattle became one of the first after the attacks.
Nothing was quite the same, McLaren said, even though the Mariners went on to clinch the American League West Division and tie baseball’s all-time record with 116 victories.
“We came back and worked out here, but it was very strange,” he said. “We never worked out like that at that time of the year. Those were lonely workouts, just us in the ballpark.”
The momentum of the Mariners’ great regular season didn’t carry over to the playoffs. They beat the Indians in the first round of the playoffs but lost in the AL Championship Series when, as McLaren described it, “fate seemed to be with the Yankees.”
During their trip to New York, the Mariners toured Ground Zero and met with families and co-workers of firefighters who died on Sept. 11.
“We went to Ground Zero and, my God, it was like someone slugged you in the stomach,” McLaren said. “It was still smoldering. I’d never smelled anything like that before. It was the smell of death.
“There were memorials and teddy bears and rosaries, and then I looked up and there was the Statue of Liberty. It hit me hard.”
Nothing became as numbing as the team’s trip to the fire station closest to Ground Zero.
“Lou Piniella walked in and those guys all started crying,” McLaren said. “It meant so much to them for Lou to take the time to do that.
“Then at the game that night, the bald eagle flew in from center field to the pitcher’s mound and the Irish Tenor sang the National Anthem and God Bless America. It was powerful.”
Wild card or bust: After a 2-10 road trip shoved them eight games behind the first-place Angels in the division, McLaren essentially conceded the division to the Angels.
The focus now is on the wild card, where the Mariners entered Monday’s game five games behind the Yankees.
“We’ve got such a long way to go to get the Angels, they would have to run into a streak like we hit,” McLaren said. “We still think we have a chance (in the wild card), which we do. We’re on the West Coast the rest of the season and we’re home 14 out of 21 games.
“We put ourselves in this position, but we’re going to come out and play hard every night.”
Of note: First baseman Richie Sexson had his injured left hamstring examined Monday night by team medical director Dr. Edward Khalfayan, and McLaren expected to know today what Sexson’s status would be. … The Mariners have gotten at least 15 hits in 20 games, more than any other major league team this season. The Tigers and Braves have done it 18 times and the Phillies 16. Sunday’s 19-hit performance by the Mariners tied the 1996 team record. … Ichiro Suzuki became the first player in Mariners history to score in each of the first four innings when he did it Sunday at Detroit.
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