A City Gets Ready to Play

Lou Lamoriello can’t count the number of times he saw the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center as he drove from his home in northern New Jersey to work at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. To the president and general manager of the New Jersey Devils, the graceful buildings were a fixture of everyday life, a symbol of permanence and prosperity.

And although Tuesday’s terrorist attacks left a void in that familiar skyline, Lamoriello said Friday he is not apprehensive about bringing his team to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday to play an exhibition game against the New York Rangers in the first professional sports event to take place in the city since the tragedy.

“I would have no fear, but that’s not to say you don’t have things on your mind,” he said. “What we have to do first of all is understand that at some point, we have to get back to as normal a life as we possibly can and trust our security people that it is safe. Then we refocus on things we took for granted, whether that’s minor security measures or major security measures.

“Maybe you have to have a little fear in it.”

The normally noisy stadiums and arenas in the New York-New Jersey area have been silenced by the postponement or cancellation of major league baseball and NFL regular-season games and NHL exhibition games from Tuesday through this weekend. The New York Mets, who switched to Pittsburgh what was to have been a three-game series against the Pirates at Shea Stadium, won’t return to Shea until Friday, to face the Atlanta Braves. The Yankees will be on the road until Sept. 25, when they return home to face Tampa Bay. When play resumes in the NFL next weekend, the Giants will be at Kansas City and the Jets will be at New England.

Local race tracks have also been closed. Belmont Park in the borough of Queens, normally dark on Mondays and Tuesdays, is scheduled to resume thoroughbred racing on Wednesday. Yonkers Raceway, north of New York City, plans to resume harness racing Monday.

Concerns about security, transportation and New York’s strained resources led officials of USA Wrestling on Friday to request a postponement of the world championships, scheduled for Sept. 26-29 at Madison Square Garden. Nearly 700 athletes from 82 countries had confirmed their participation, including many natives of Middle Eastern countries and ethnic Muslims. Those athletes could have been targeted for retribution by people enraged over the attacks, creating a security risk for competitors, officials and spectators.

FILA, the international wrestling federation, is not expected to respond to the request before Monday.

Gary Abbott, director of special projects for USA Wrestling, said organizers are intent on holding the event in New York rather than moving it. However, he acknowledged the difficulty of booking the Garden for a block of more than a few days once hockey and basketball seasons have begun.

Moving to the Theater at Madison Square Garden, a 6,000-seat facility that often hosts concerts and boxing matches, or to the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island are among options being considered. The decision will be made in concert with the local organizing committee, NY2012, which is also the bid committee for the city’s effort to organize the Summer Olympics.

“Everyone in the U.S. and the wrestling community wants to have these championships in New York,” said Abbott, a native New Yorker whose brother was forced to evacuate his office at 2 Wall Street after the two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers. “There was a strong desire to do it on schedule, but we’ve all learned in the last week that there are things in this world we can’t control.

“We’re working hard right now to figure things out. The people at NY2012 feel confident they can make this work, and that’s why we asked for the postponement.”

When events resume in New York, they will take place under watchful eyes. Penn Station, which sits beneath the Garden, received a bomb scare Wednesday night that proved to be groundless. But the threat renewed fears that had begun to subside after the initial shock of the attack.

Several events were canceled at the Garden this week, including tonight’s scheduled Felix Trinidad-Bernard Hopkins middleweight championship fight, a charity basketball game, and two Ranger practices and an intrasquad game. The team had planned to train at the Garden but moved its base to Rye, in Westchester County, north of the city.

Nonetheless, the Rangers haven’t escaped the tragedy: a close friend of defenseman Brian Leetch is dead, and the brother-in-law of assistant general manager Don Maloney is among the missing. That has infused equal measures of poignancy and anxiety into the team’s deliberations over Wednesday’s game and how to honor the dead and injured while recognizing the psychological need to resume old routines and move on.

“We’re talking about all kinds of stuff, as far as a tribute,” Ranger spokesman John Rosasco said. “We’re talking about what we could do that would be respectful and proper.”

Frank Brown, the NHL’s vice president for media relations, said the league has not formulated a list of security procedures teams must follow. “Not that I’d make it public if we did,” he said.

But it’s certain that teams will use measures such as metal-detecting wands--already in use at Staples Center--or metal detectors to safeguard their players, fans and employees.

“We haven’t dictated any terms to them,” Brown said. “We’ve told them to take whatever measures they feel are necessary to make a safe working environment and a safe public environment when that becomes relevant and games are resumed.”

Madison Square Garden spokesman Barry Watkins declined to specify security measures that will be taken for the Ranger-Devil game. He said Ranger and Garden officials will consult with New York City police and government officials in deciding what should be done.

Lamoriello, whose daughter lives on 22nd Street in Manhattan, said he anticipates a swell of patriotism Wednesday that could exceed the stirring show at the 1991 All-Star Game at Chicago Stadium. Before that game, which was played during the Gulf War, fans and players joined in a rousing rendition of the national anthem that sent chills down the spine of everyone who saw and heard it.

“Whether it’s closing your eyes, or singing the anthem, I’m sure we’ll all be doing something,” he said. “It’s on everyone’s minds 24 hours a day. Whatever the Garden chooses to do, I’m sure it will be the right thing.”