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allan maki

It has been 10 years since the fall of the towers and every September he is out on the road, flying to places across the continent to watch young men play hockey.

It's not easy for Mike Bavis. His twin brother Mark was a scout for the Los Angeles Kings and aboard the second plane that crashed into the World Trade Center. Mike's job as assistant coach of the Boston University hockey team means he has to scout and recruit players at this fateful time of year. At least the promise of a new season gives him cause for hope, a respite against the haunting questions: Why Mark? Why then? Why not him?

"I try not to dig too deep," Bavis said. "It's hard to imagine that of all the flights in this country on any given day, someone from my family was flying on that plane. I don't know the odds of that. I only knew that as much as I had all these things away from the ice, hockey was a distraction. … I needed to get back to it."

It was the day the world stood still, a time when nothing mattered but the searing images on our television screens. The WTC was in shambles, the U.S. Pentagon in flames. Thousands of people were dead. The last thing on our minds was Mike Piazza's batting average for the New York Mets or another Michael Jordan comeback.

But as the shock dimmed and people searched for comfort, what was meaningless took on a special meaning. Sports offered a way back. They were part therapy, part healing balm. Events were cancelled or postponed, some because all flights were grounded and there was no way to play. Yet when the games resumed, the fans returned. They watched as Piazza drilled a two-run homer on Sept. 21 to beat the Atlanta Braves at Shea Stadium, the staging area for the first Ground Zero relief efforts. They saw baseball players with U.S. flags stitched on their jerseys and football players wearing flag decals on their helmets. They witnessed then president George Bush deliver the first pitch at Game 3 of the 2001 World Series at Yankee Stadium.

The public got what it wanted even if it was occasionally mishandled.

"Baseball had God Bless America sung at every game [after 9/11]and there were two teams in Canada at that time," recalled Peter Donnelly, head of the University of Toronto's Centre for Sport Policy Studies. "It seemed a little absurd."

True enough, but sports presented an opportunity to reflect and celebrate at the same time. It was the only true solace for Bavis's family of Boston's Roslindale neighbourhood. The two boys, Mark and Mike, had played together from minor hockey to high school, BU and even the East Coast League, where they were South Carolina Stingrays for a season. Eventually the brothers got into coaching – Mark with Harvard, Mike with BU. Then Mark started scouting for the L.A. Kings and, at 31, it looked as if he had found his niche.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mark Bavis and veteran scout Garnet (Ace) Bailey boarded United Airlines flight 175 in Boston headed for L.A. Their plane was hijacked and flown into the WTC's south tower. Mike Bavis was in Calgary that day, scouting another player, when his mother phoned and asked, "Have you heard from Mark?"

After reaching the Kings, Bavis learned the awful truth: His brother was gone. Mike rented a car and drove to North Dakota, where a friend lined up a private jet to fly him home. Not long after, he was back on the ice, coaching.

"I believe that for all the negatives – the runaway salaries, the inappropriate incidents in the pros and college – sports provide an outlet of enjoyment," Bavis said, just back from a recruiting trip to Edmonton. "They really do matter. I think they did for a lot of us."

Michael Lysko was the man who ensured the CFL didn't turn its back on the chaos burning in the U.S. As league commissioner, he decided the weekend games should be postponed. Three CFL governors opposed him. They figured they'd have the sporting scene all to themselves. Lysko dug in his heels, which crippled his support and contributed to his firing in 2002. Today, Lysko is the director of Southern Methodist University's sports management program in Dallas and no less convinced a period of grace was needed.

"It wasn't getting better by Thursday or Friday," Lysko said of the mood following the Tuesday attacks. "It was getting worse. It was a cumulative trauma. On something like this, there is no border. How could we have played when we had American players in our league? I didn't want to be involved in a league that played."

In the days after 9/11, sports and the real world knew no boundary. The New York Yankees and New York Jets visited Ground Zero. The Mets donated a day's salary, $450,000 (U.S.), to relief efforts. The Washington Redskins went to Arlington National Cemetery and prayed. The San Francisco 49ers donated blood. Fans and athletes bonded.

Toronto Blue Jays infielder Chris Woodward wasn't sure how that worked until he played for the Mets in 2005 and spoke to Piazza about his dramatic post-9/11 home run.

"He said fans came up to him – and I get goose bumps thinking about it – fans came up to him that lost people in 9/11 and either gave him a hug or just to say, 'Thank you … because that saved our lives,'" Woodward said. "It was pretty overwhelming to hear [Piazza's]side of it."

If you watch a sporting event on TV now, you'd be hard-pressed to see any 9/11-induced changes. The U.S. flag is on some jerseys, not all. You can still hear God Bless America being sung, but not everywhere. Beyond that, the games look and feel the same. The difference is behind the scenes: the increase in security.

The threat of terrorism has had its way with big-event organizers and their budgets, and nowhere is that more evident than at the Olympic Games. Here's how: Six months after the attacks, the 2002 Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City. The cost for security jumped to a whopping $300-million (U.S.). But that was chicken feed.

For the 2004 Summer Olympics, Athens spent $1.35-billion (U.S.). For Vancouver's 2010 Olympics, it was $1-billion (Canadian) while the estimate for next summer's London Games is $2-billion (U.S.).

"The cost of security is monolithic now," said Ottawa lawyer Michael Chambers, who was head of the Canadian Olympic Committee during the 9/11 attacks. "There are no elements of the Games where we can be soft. Now venues outside the athletes' village have to be protected as well. You don't know where the attack can come from."

The Olympics are an inviting target given their worldwide audience and political undertones. In 1972 in Munich, Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. In 1996, a pipe bomb was exploded in downtown Atlanta, killing two, injuring 111. Chambers was in Montreal for the 1976 Olympics and noted how front-and-centre the police and military presence was, post-Munich.

"Salt Lake felt different than Montreal because of the high-tech advances [surveillance cameras, magnetic detecting, etc.] What everyone has tried to do is answer the security issue without affecting the actual experience of the athletes and coaches," Chambers said. "To a large measure, that has been accomplished."

For Bavis and his family, their lives carry on forever changed. They are the only ones who haven't accepted money from the victims' compensation fund established by U.S. Congress. Instead, their wrongful-death lawsuit filed against United Airlines and the security firm at Boston's Logan International Airport is set for trial in November. The Bavises want all the facts of what happened that horrible day made public. Whatever the outcome in court, Mike Bavis knows what he needs to do, where he needs to be.

"My family, we tend to grin and bare it, do our job. When you're on the ice, you're all in. It's good," he said. "It helps me cope."



With a report from Robert MacLeod

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