Mike Piazza, Bobby Valentine and former Mets reflect on emotional home run in first game back after 9/11 attacks

Bobby Valentine took a moment before talking about September 2001, a time period he said he hasn’t revisited very much in his mind.

“It’s amazing it’s been 25 years, huh?”

Friday marks 25 years since 9/11. A mere 10 days after the attacks, the Mets — who were managed by Valentine — were tasked with providing an escape to the millions of hurting New Yorkers.

Atlanta visited Shea Stadium on Sept. 21, 2001, and a baseball game was to be played, the first professional sporting event in New York City since 9/11.

The Mets’ 3-2 win over their hated rivals — though they were friends and compatriots much more than rivals at that moment — provided a few hours that many remember as helping start the healing process and, of course,  one of the most iconic, inspirational moments in New York baseball this century: Mike Piazza’s go-ahead two-run home run in the eighth inning.

A quarter-century has passed, but make no mistake: the thought of even playing this game was filled with doubt, fear and angst.

“There’s the idea that CNN was being shown in the caves of Afghanistan. That was a surreal thought just to think about it, right?” Valentine told Newsday in a recent phone interview. “Most of us were sleep-deprived. I know I was. Most of us were living in that unknown world, and I think it was so heroic of these players from both teams, and of all the stadium operations people to come to work, and of all the fans to come to the game. The airport was right around the corner.

“It wasn’t like this was a slam dunk, this is exactly the right thing we’re supposed to do . . . I was dealing with presentation. I wasn’t dealing with winning or losing the game. I had called [then-Atlanta manager] Bobby Cox. They obviously didn’t want to come up to New York. Why would they?

“When you look back at it now — other than the fact that it worked out so perfectly — why did we play the game at Shea Stadium?”

’Part of the healing process’

Valentine was far from alone in his sentiment of wondering whether the game should happen.

“The first thing that came to mind for all of us was: Why are we playing a baseball game?” Al Leiter, who started for the Mets on Sept. 23, told Newsday. “And obviously, hindsight’s 20-20, and we were part of the healing process. And no question, it was the right move for Bud Selig and Major League Baseball to say we have to play baseball.

“The dichotomy in the mindset right after 9/11 for everybody — I was living in the city the whole time when I was with the Mets, on the Upper East Side — it was like you were angry. You were furious at what transpired, terrorists taking down the World Trade Center, obviously the other planes as well, Shanksville and the Pentagon. But there was a vulnerability to what we were thinking . . . You were scared. You were nervous. You were mad.

“But it all surmised that baseball was part of the healing process.”

The Mets wore the hats of first responders, including the NYPD, FDNY and Port Authority Police Department — but not without a fight from MLB as New Era had the rights to the league’s hats. But as Valentine recalled: “We weren’t in the mood to listen to anyone. We were going to wear the hats in the game.”

Valentine had worked for former President George W. Bush as manager of the Texas Rangers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (Bush ultimately fired him in July 1992.) In September 2001, he was working for Bush again, now with Bush as commander-in-chief. Once Valentine was told that Bush wanted to play the Sept. 21 game, it was his mission to make it work.

He called Cox — someone who Leiter recognized was “no fan of our Bobby Valentine” — and asked him to embrace on the field before the game and let everyone know “we’re unified in everything we’re doing.”

After powerful pregame moments of Diana Ross singing “God Bless America” and Marc Anthony singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” both teams hugged on the field for the world to see.

“The Braves are the rivals of the Mets, and then they come into town and see the situation,” Edgardo Alfonzo said. “I don’t think we see each other as a rival. We see each other as a human being, and they gave great support to us because we’re the team from New York, and we forget it for the moment.”

’Just different’

Nothing was the same entering Shea Stadium from Sept. 21 through the rest of the season.

Metal detectors. Bomb-sniffing dogs. Snipers on top of the stadium.

Quite the contrast with a typical ballgame. But the measures were necessary.

“It was probably the safest place in the country at the time,” John Franco said.

Aside from the increased security protocols, Robin Ventura said the simplest interactions were different — and much tougher to deal with — in the post-9/11 games, too.

“It was you’re meeting families before the game, and it was constant the rest of the way through,” Ventura said. “But I think we came in after that [Sept. 21] game, you’re relieved that we got through it. You won. You got through it. Everybody’s OK. Everybody can kind of go back to normal. And I think after that, games became a little more normal, but the pregame stuff was obviously different every day, and that was just different.

“Like normally, you’re meeting families or you’re doing stuff. But this one, you know that it’s been rough on them. Kids, and losing a dad or a mom. That part was rough.”

Todd Zeile was a player rep for the 2001 Mets, and he felt “very compelled” to get back to playing baseball. He took messaging from Bush and then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to heart, echoing the belief that “you can knock us down but you can’t keep us down.”

But he had no idea what the turnout would look like that first game back.

“I wasn’t sure if 500 people would show up or 5,000 or 50,000,” Zeile said. “I had no idea until they started coming in.”

The recorded attendance tally: 41,235, short of the capacity of 57,333 but a wildly impressive number considering the situation. And that crowd was rocking.

’Back to being NY fans’

Valentine didn’t mince words when asked where that Piazza homer ranks among the most memorable moments in his life.

“Well, in my life, it was on par with my son being born,” he said.

Ventura was on deck when Piazza hit the homer, knowing that the crowd was in a frenzy. Liza Minnelli’s emotional performance of “New York, New York” during the seventh-inning stretch certainly had something to do with that. He visualized how cool it would be if Piazza did “something big.”

Leiter had started for the Marlins in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series and pitched for Toronto in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, the game capped by Joe Carter’s iconic walk-off homer. But Piazza’s moment is no doubt “up there” among the most memorable in his career.

And for Piazza himself?

“Even though I was the guy that hit the home run, I truly felt like it wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t have everybody behind me, from my teammates, the closest to me, from obviously the first responders, the families, the fans,” Piazza said Thursday at Citi Field before a screening of the new MLB Network documentary, “When America Took the Field,” that featured Zeile as an executive producer.

“Because even though everybody was pulling for me, I felt that. So even though that’s what we’re trained to do, it still can’t happen without that lifeblood from other people . . . and a little luck doesn’t hurt either.

“I’m lucky [Steve Karsay] threw me two fastballs. I missed the first one but didn’t miss the second. So luck is always good.”

The Mets were down 2-1 with one out and no one on base in the bottom of the eighth when Alfonzo stepped to the plate. He remembered his plate appearance being a battle, and it sure was. He fouled off three pitches before working a nine-pitch walk.

“That was a fighting at-bat for me,” Alfonzo said. “Finally, I get to first base, I get a pinch runner [Desi Relaford], and then I get to the dugout and push for my boy. We’ve been doing the whole year like that. I try to get on base, Mike drives me in, and then that was the way it works for us for a couple of years.”

Parts of Shea Stadium were built on rails. And when Piazza hit a big homer, Ventura said, you could feel a “thumping in the turf.” Zeile said you could feel the ground shake.

On this night, Ventura still could feel it when he returned to play third base in the top of the ninth.

“I could feel that for probably another inning,” he said. “It was just different, and it was like the top came off, and everybody felt like it was OK to cheer, boo. They were back to being New York fans.”

Said Valentine: “There aren’t many things that happen in your life where you’re involved in an action where everything just stops. That’s what happened with me for that split-second of time.”

The moment was so significant that it’s featured on Piazza’s Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown. Piazza, who travels a lot and reportedly has lived in Italy for a significant part of the past decade, said “so many people” have approached him about the homer and its impact.

“It’s such an honor because the fact that it just keeps rolling in time, I guess,” he said. “It doesn’t really have a stop point, which is rare. It doesn’t have the same effect as like a game-winning home run in a playoff game, even though those are great, so that’s what kind of separates it a little bit from other home runs. But yeah, I mean, if that’s what I’m remembered for, great. I’ll take it. I’ll definitely take it, and continue to reflect with other people.

“When they come up to me, they go, ‘I bet you get tired of talking [about it].’ No, I don’t. Let’s talk about it. So that’s usually what I say.”

’Never forget’

Franco described the night of Sept. 21 as putting a “small band-aid on a big wound.”

He remembered the Mets being happy they won after the game. Heck, Atlanta was happy the Mets won that game.

The night was especially meaningful and emotional for Franco, a New York City native who turned 41 that Sept. 17 and pitched in the game.

“We’ll never forget that day,” he said.

“Never forget” have been the two most prominent words in remembrance of 9/11.

For Valentine, he’ll never forget the bravery of everyone coming to the ballpark that day. He’ll never forget the unification of the Mets and Atlanta that brought all different types of people together.

He noted it may seem “ho-hum” now that it’s 25 years later, but in reality it was a miracle that the night was pulled off to perfection.

“It could not have been scripted any better,” Valentine said. “It’s just sad that it had to be scripted at all.”