MIAMI _ Sports screeched to a halt in unprecedented fashion, partaking not merely in a moment of silence but rather an entire weekend of cheerless mourning, and now the giant entertainment vehicle lurches back into gear from a full stop, slowly and clumsily and with a jolt, like a train does when it, too, feels heavy and tries to gather momentum despite the burden of a great weight.
It will pick up speed again over time, back on track, but for the moment we remain in the lurching and uncomfortable and unsettling portion of this journey, a million miles of healing begun with this one tiny, unsteady step.
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and the Seattle Mariners resume their respective chases now as we in sports try to force this Monday to feel something like the last Monday, or the one before that, knowing it can't be so.
No matter how many games are rescheduled, no matter how long the NFL chooses to make its season, the 2001 scoreboard is forever changed, much like us, but we'll find safety in the blanket of routine and file the resumption of play under the umbrella of 'getting back to normal,' pretending there is such a thing.
Normal? Those suicidal terrorists flew into our nation's heart and took that from us, and no amount of vengeance or victory extracted on Afghanistan's soil is going to bring it back, not when the Marlins-Expos highlights on ESPN and two 110-story towers blowing up on MSNBC remain separated by but a button on the remote control.
Like us, New York will clean up and rebuild. But, like us, New York cannot and will not be the same. We are in a far different place than we were the seconds before those kamikaze commercial planes with our names on them (American, United) turned the symbolic centers of New York City and Washington into cemeteries.
We've always mixed sports and patriotism _ The chant of 'U-S-A! U-S-A!' can bring a grown man to tears, especially at a time like this; the photograph of goalie Jim Craig draped in an American flag after the 1980 Olympic victory over the Russians occupies a prominent place in the sports scrapbook, frozen in forever _ but now we do so awkwardly because it doesn't feel quite right to play over here while fighting over there.
(And speaking of awkward, you think Sports Illustrated is regretting the timing of a photo that wraps a nude Venus and Serena Williams in American flags?)
Athletes represent us, for better or for worse, with sports often holding up a mirror and seeing society in the reflection, and we've seen the way they've poured themselves into helping with money and time and support over the last few days, but we've seen the way they've talked about being afraid to fly across the country in planes full of fuel, too.
(I would not want to be the terrorist who tries to take over the plane of the Dolphins armed with a box cutter.)
We are, all at once, stronger than ever and more vulnerable than ever, too, and that sounds as contradictory as it is true, just as it sounds contradictory but is true that we are about to find peace by unleashing yet more violence, just as it sounds contradictory but is true that the leader of our country movingly said Friday that, 'This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing' while standing in the center of a church.
If all that seems like it doesn't make sense, what does today?
Religious zealots fly jets into America's biggest buildings _ not on a Sunday or at midnight, mind you, but at a busy time when the most innocent people possible could be killed _ and somehow think that a holy book or god endorses this?
What makes sense about that?
Broken, haunted people roam the nuclear-winter streets of New York like the undead, holding pictures of their lost loved ones in an act of heartbreaking desperation that captures America's feeling of helplessness by the snapshot?
What makes sense about that?
We are united states now in more than just name, this calamity having brought out the best in us, but in a lot of ways, despite all our mighty strength, our nation is as lost and confused as those relatives wandering New York's streets. We are waging war, but against whom? With all the unspeakable wrath and vengeance we can muster, we are about to launch ourselves at an idea more than a country.
Men like Osmana bin Laden _ all 6-6, 160 punk pounds of him _ don't fear us, or dying. You don't do what he is suspected of doing Tuesday if you do. And, frighteningly enough, you deny it only because you want to do it again. He wants a holy war and, by God, we are going to give it to him, but that hardly makes me feel much better or less confused. Let's say bin Laden turns up dead right this moment. Are we done?
I thought I would feel better by today, but I feel worse. Too many weeping widows on TV, too many stories of chaplains dying while giving last rites to firefighters, too many cold numbers turning into real humans with faces and stories that make my eyes sting. I want to watch sports again, not to heal but to feel something other than sorrow and shock and anger, even if just for an inning.
Sports genuflected this weekend.
It will try to get up beginning today.
The rest of us, unfortunately, remain on one knee.
___
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
(c) 2001, The Miami Herald.
Visit The Miami Herald Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.herald.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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