Sports world on hold

Ronald Blum

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001 | 10:08 a.m.

Major league baseball postponed its entire schedule of 15 games today for the second straight day following terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and other sports could soon follow.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon have brought professional and college sports to a standstill nationwide and it was unclear when they would resume.

Major league baseball postponed a full schedule of regular-season games for the first time since D-Day in 1944, many college football games were called off and the NFL was deciding whether to play Sunday.

Besides work stoppages, it was the first time since the Allied invasion of France that baseball wiped out a whole day of regular-season play.

Baseball hadn't postponed more than one straight day of games since cutting the 1918 season short by almost a month because of World War I.

Baseball, with just 2 1/2 weeks remaining in its pennant races, perhaps was most affected. Teams are fighting for playoff berths and Barry Bonds hopes to hit eight more home runs to break Mark McGwire's record of 70.

Commissioner Bud Selig said he made the decision to postpone games "in the interest of security and out of a sense of deep mourning for the national tragedy."

The NFL, criticized for playing after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, wasn't sure whether to play this weekend's schedule.

"We'll gather information and speak to several parties within the next 24 to 48 hours," league spokesman Joe Browne said.

Jacksonville Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin's son, Tim, was in the World Trade Center when the first plane crashed into it, but escaped uninjured.

College football commissioners considered postponing the weekend's entire schedule. Three games set for Thursday night and four on Saturday were postponed, including No. 13 Washington at No. 1 Miami.

"The games themselves are insignificant in the face of what has happened today," NCAA president Cedric Dempsey said.

Commissioners of the NCAA's Division I-A conferences, including the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern, held a conference call to discuss their options for staging this weekend's football games. There were 116 Division I games scheduled for Thursday through Saturday. The ACC postponed all sports through Thursday.

Three Thursday night games were called off: Texas Tech at Texas-El Paso was tentatively pushed back to Saturday; Ohio at North Carolina State was rescheduled for Nov. 24; and Penn State at Virginia was not immediately rescheduled.

Saturday's Washington-Miami game might be played Nov. 24. Other games wiped out that day include Arizona State-UCLA at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. (might be played Dec. 1); San Diego State at Ohio State (rescheduled for Oct. 20); and Brown at San Diego (canceled).

Also:

The Tampa Bay Classic will open with 18 holes each on Friday and Saturday and a 36-hole conclusion. The same schedule has been applied to the Buy.com Tour event in Oregon. The Senior Tour will remain on schedule, with a 54-hole event that starts Friday in North Carolina.

"This is a sad, sad day in America," Tiger Woods said.

"I look for the federal government to revisit the public safety plans for the games," he said.

Eight Champions League and more than 40 UEFA Cup matches were scheduled to be played on Wednesday and Thursday.

It was only the third time the major leagues postponed an entire day's schedule, besides when there has been labor strife, according to Scot Mondore of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

The others were Aug. 2, 1923, when President Harding died; and June 6, 1944, when Allied forces invaded France in World War II. Exhibition games were called off on April 14, 1945, two days after the death of President Roosevelt.

In Pittsburgh, the New York Mets left a hotel across the street from a federal building and moved to the suburbs as a security precaution.

Atlanta pitcher John Burkett, at home in Dallas following an off-day, borrowed the car of former teammate Rusty Greer and drove about 850 miles to Atlanta, where he had been scheduled to pitch against the Philadelphia Phillies today.

"I felt obligated to my team to be there," he said. "I would've felt sick at home knowing I could've and should've been there, but wasn't."