Matthew Engel in New York
New York was stunned into silence this week a silence that in a normal year would be called shocked, even grief-stricken. The cause was a sporting defeat, but this was no ordinary defeat: the New York Yankees, the most successful team in the history of American sport, were beaten at the last gasp of the baseball World Series by the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team in business only since 1998.
The Yankees were on the brink of their fourth successive championship, their 27th in all, until the Diamondbacks scored two runs at the end of the deciding game to win. This is not unreasonable behaviour, except that such victories are a Yankee speciality. Their triumphs are a tradition of the American fall to rank alongside Halloween and Thanksgiving.
And this particular autumn, baseball, and the Yankees in particular, have self-consciously asserted themselves as the embodiment of the defiance of both city and country. No United States institution has attached itself quite so firmly to the flag: a tattered Stars and Stripes found in the World Trade Centre flew over Yankee stadium at home games.
Those watching the TV pictures from Arizona seemed so certain of victory that when the Diamondbacks initially went ahead, they assumed it was merely an essential part of the storyline leading to New York’s triumph over adversity. Reality dawned just before midnight on Sunday.
A sharp wind made the smoke from Ground Zero more bitter and pervasive than ever on Monday. A small police group was chatting on Canal Street. One was louder than the rest: “You know, baseball, you can’t, you know, get worked up with all this.” He gestured towards the devastation. “But jeez, the Yankees.”