David Lennon: Yankees vs. Mets appropriate matchup on 25th anniversary of 9/11

When Friday night’s Subway Series began, the two New York rivals were on much different tracks.

The Yankees stood only a few wins away from securing their third straight playoff berth and eighth in the past decade.

And the Mets? Headed home for a second straight October, but without the white-knuckle elimination of a year ago.

It’s been a familiar theme. But on this occasion, the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Subway Series took on greater meaning than a group of New Yorkers playing a baseball game on a Bronx street corner. The fact that the Yankees and Mets were meeting on such a hallowed date for this city provided a show of unity that rarely ever takes place between the two franchises.

And once the stirring pregame ceremony wrapped up, with seven members of the 2001 Yankees taking center stage — including Mr. November from that year, Derek Jeter — perhaps the most reassuring part of the entire night was the return to normalcy.

Twenty-five years ago, that’s when baseball lent a hand to pull everyone back to their feet — or at least help them believe it was possible again.

Which is why, all this time later, the Mets could be booed loudly during Friday’s introductions. And Juan Soto, who finished third in the MVP voting during his only season in pinstripes — not to mention help the Yankees get to the World Series in 2024 — was jeered relentlessly during his first at-bat.

Soto’s only reprieve came when the fans switched to “U-S-A!” chants before Carlos Rodon whiffed the former Yankee (and raucous cheers ensued). So much for unity.

And for Yankees fans, it only got better. Soto came up as the tying run in the ninth but grounded into a 3-6-3 double play that sealed the Yankees’ 6-4 win before a sellout crowd of 47,410.

It was Cody Bellinger who put the Yankees in front to stay when he snapped a 1-1 tie with two outs in the second inning with a three-run homer into the rightfield seats. Ben Rice added his 37th homer in the fifth, Ryan McMahon had an RBI single in the eighth and David Bednar earned a five-out save to restore order in New York’s baseball hierarchy.

“Today was the day where it felt bigger than the game and bigger than yourself,” Bellinger said afterward. “I’m sure the majority of the people there were affected by that day in some way, shape or form, so just nice to go and play a game and give them something to cheer about.”

Life has changed quite a bit during the last quarter-century. Ground Zero was rebuilt, the World Trade Center’s footprints transformed into a cherished memorial. The current rosters of both the Yankees and Mets are filled with players who weren’t even born when the towers were attacked by terrorists, or were so young as to have little recollection of the horrific day, other than watching YouTube videos.

For years, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we could turn to the people who took part in the city’s recovery when it was time to reflect and remember. Bobby Valentine, Joe Torre, Todd Zeile, Mike Piazza, Bernie Williams, John Franco, Derek Jeter, Robin Ventura, Al Leiter.

But 25 years later? The next generation of major-leaguers knows the significance of “Never Forget. Their role now, however, is to represent the legacy of the team’s name across their chests and the first responders on their caps.

“We understand playing here, what the Yankees, what the Mets, mean to the people in this city,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said Friday afternoon.

Everyone involved in baseball, or any professional sport, truly wondered how any of it could possibly matter again when the population was so shattered by horrific events beyond their imagination. People were too busy mourning family, friends and a country that wasn’t sure how to take those first steps toward a recovery that didn’t feel possible.

There was Piazza’s home run at Shea Stadium during the first game back in New York. The Yankees’ run to the World Series, which finished just short of a storybook ending. The highlights from that October were replayed on the videoboard before Friday night’s game, snapshots from a period that feels like ancient history now.

Some might suggest it would have been more fitting to hold this Subway Series in Flushing, where baseball truly returned after 9/11. After all, the Shea Stadium parking lots were used as a triage center and staging grounds for the distribution of relief supplies around the city.

Then again, Yankee Stadium — the original, anyway — was the site of the greatest ceremonial first pitch in history, when President George W. Bush didn’t bounce it, delivering a perfect strike — from the rubber at the top of the mound, at Jeter’s urging — before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series.

But that’s just the rivalry talking. The important part was putting the Yankees and Mets on the same field for this sacred date, allowing the two sides of the New York baseball aisle to join forces, and you didn’t even have to be from the city to appreciate that.

Mets interim manager Andy Green was playing for Class A South Bend (Indiana) when he awoke to the news that morning. A quarter-century later, he found himself front-and-center on this unique day, trying to explain to his Mets how the magnitude of 9/11 still resonates.

“It’s an opportunity just to have some kind of cathartic moments in your life where you step back and think about what really matters and what some people have been through,” Green said Friday afternoon. “It centers you, it re-centers you, it keeps you going. And it also gives you an immense amount of gratitude for what we get to do for a living, because this game has played a part in this country’s healing from that.”

The Yankees and Mets certainly did it for New York. And whether it’s 25 years or the next 100, we’ll never forget that.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.