Still Foolin' 'Em (28 page)

L
INDSAY
: I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I’m so scared. WHAT IS HAPPENING?????

Within moments, the second tower was hit, and the huge fireball filled the screen.

On television, the replays were staggering. As the second plane got closer I could see the jet gain speed, as if the hatred of the terrorist pilot were fueling the engines. Somehow the building absorbed the blow and remained standing, like a fighter on the ropes. Horrifically tight helicopter shots of the inferno revealed people jumping to their deaths.

L
INDSAY
: OH MY GOD!

U
S
: The Pentagon was hit also and there is another plane, they think, heading for D.C. This is war.

I got Berns on the phone. He was with an aide from the building as the second tower came crashing down. I could hear it and Berns’s labored breathing. “Bastards,” he muttered, and then the phone went dead.

L
INDSAY
: I HAVE TO GET THERE.

U
S
: Stay where you are. Keep trying to call the desk of his building. That’s what we’re trying to do but it’s always busy. Keep trying. STAY HOME.

The next hours were excruciating, and finally that night we were informed that the fire department had evacuated the elderly residents of Berns’s building and taken them on a school bus to a sister facility in Yonkers. He was safe. Lindsay, moved by the thought that, if Berns had perished that day, she wouldn’t have known who he really was, started to spend time with him and began to film their conversations. It became a beautiful relationship and ultimately a fascinating documentary called
My Uncle Berns,
which not only won a few film festivals but was also broadcast on HBO and led to her becoming a field producer on
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
for four years. It was one of the few good things that came out of 9/11.

We had watched the murder of three thousand innocent people on television. We watched this vile act celebrated in some parts of the Middle East. We watched our world and our future change in moments of insanity. We were introduced to the madman Osama bin Laden. Still reeling from my uncle Milt’s passing, 9/11 was another huge blow. There would be others.

Dick Schaap, the noted sports journalist who’d been the first person to put me on television, had become one of our best friends. He was a special man with a great sense of humor and a gentle spirit. I had introduced him to Berns at a family function and they’d become fast friends and would often see each other while Janice and I were in California. He called to see how Berns was doing, and I put them in touch. Berns had left his building in his wheelchair, wearing slippers, and had no shoes and only the clothes on his eighty-six-year-old back. Dick not only bought Berns clothes, he found him some sneakers—which wasn’t easy, considering Berns wore a size 17. Dick got them from a contact at the NBA and brought them to Berns in Yonkers. Dick called us when they were all together and then told me he was going in for hip replacement surgery the next day. He said he’d talk to me as soon as he could, and to let him know if Berns needed anything. Let him know? He was about to have major surgery, but he was more concerned about my uncle.

Dick had the usually routine surgery, but there were complications, including an embolism in one of his lungs. A botched diagnosis followed, and eventually he was put into a coma so his body could heal itself. We were devastated and worried. What more could go wrong?

*   *   *

Monsters, Inc.
opened as a big hit, but the strain of the last few months made me feel like I was running in mud. I loved playing Mike Wazowski, the little one-eyed green monster, opposite John Goodman. To me, the movie was a classic, and I was thrilled to be in a modern-day
Pinocchio,
but I found it hard to enjoy anything. Pixar arranged a series of screenings for families of police officers and firemen and first responders, which John Goodman and I hosted. New York at that time was a nervous, grieving place. Everyone had an ominous instinct that at any moment Al Qaeda could strike again. There were warnings of chemical attacks and suicide bombings, and the airports seemed like war zones. People thought twice about being in crowds, and those of Middle Eastern heritage were scrutinized. The smoking wreckage of the buildings was piled high, and bodies were still being removed. We all had a sick feeling, knowing that some three thousand souls were hovering over Ground Zero. At the
Monsters, Inc.
screenings, it was moving to see these young people have a laugh or two in the midst of their sadness. It was also a prelude for what would become one of the more difficult tasks of my career.

The Concert for New York City was being put together as a major benefit for the families who’d lost loved ones that day. The Who, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, and the Stones were among the legendary musicians who would play, and I was asked to greet the huge crowd at Madison Square Garden. David Bowie opened the show, and then it was my turn. Gripped with fear about what had happened to our city and our world, and weighed down by the constant feeling of being on guard, I walked out onto the stage. All the moments of my career could not prepare me for what I saw. The members of the audience directly in front of me were all firefighters and police officers and men, women, and children holding up signs saying,
HAVE YOU SEEN MY BROTHER? HAVE YOU SEEN MY FATHER? HAVE YOU SEEN MY MOTHER, MY WIFE, MY HUSBAND, MY SISTER, MY COUSIN, MY FRIEND, MY TEACHER? HAVE YOU SEEN…”

The pictures of the certain dead pasted onto the signs made for an eerie audience. Most of the photos were of a smiling face frozen in time staring straight ahead at me. Alongside them was the audience of loved ones, hurt and exhausted, each with the same expression: wounded, angry, confused, and scared. Usually audiences are happy to see me; this time I felt that they needed me. I like to make eye contact with the audience as I arrive onstage. I check them out and assess what kind of crowd they are. It’s always interesting to gauge a reaction as they see me for the first time: sometimes smiling, sometimes giddy with anticipation, sometimes respectfully warm. There’s usually one or two joyless souls, but this mass of humanity had just lived through a nightmare.

They had to know in their hearts that there was no chance that their special person had survived and was wandering the streets or lying nameless in a hospital, unable to communicate.

In the weeks following the attacks, lethal amounts of anthrax powder had been mailed to various notables, including Senator Tom Daschle, whom I was to introduce following my opening monologue. It was hard not to cry as I received the crowd’s warm welcome. I tried to be funny—“I’ve never seen musicians run away from white powder before”—and I tried to be comforting and inspirational as I explained that this evening was for them and to show the world that we aren’t afraid: we’re New Yorkers, and we will move on. People were on their feet as I introduced Senator Daschle. I left the stage that night but really haven’t in some ways. The looks on those faces still make their way into my dreams, and every time I visit Ground Zero, I don’t look down into the cascading memorials; I look up, and for a brief moment, the towers stand again.

*   *   *

As Ground Zero continued to smolder and the rescue part of the mission ceased, the nation slowly moved on, and David Letterman proved to be an unlikely catalyst. David gave an impassioned speech when his show returned to the airwaves. I’d known him for a long time, our relationship at the time solely that between a guest and a host. There is no one I enjoy making laugh more than David. I think he is to many younger comedians what Johnny was to me. That off-the-cuff speech was very healing for millions. He wasn’t just cranky, funny Dave. He was Dave, our friend who had a heart and a soul we hadn’t realized existed. “There is only one requirement for any of us, and that is to be courageous, because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior,” he said. At that point, every little bit of help, no matter in what form, was desperately needed, and David delivered beautifully the feelings and thoughts we were all experiencing, and in fact made it okay to move forward.

Baseball returned as well, reminding us of the powerful speech James Earl Jones gave in
Field of Dreams.
Through two world wars there was always baseball, he told us, and in 2001, once again the New York Yankees rose to the occasion and went to the World Series, this time versus the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Awkward.
A few years earlier, Janice and I had become minority owners (I don’t mean Jewish) of the D-backs. I had always wanted to be involved with Major League Baseball, and owning a tiny share of the new Arizona franchise, only an hour by air from Los Angeles, seemed ideal. I had no idea that a few short years later the expansion team would be in the World Series, against my New York Yankees. But the heart is the heart, after all, so I was rooting for the Yankees. We went to the first two games in Phoenix. My dear friends Joe Torre and Commissioner Bud Selig got us great seats behind the Yankee dugout, from which we could see our business partners on the Arizona side. When a shot of me sitting in Yankee land appeared on the big video screen, the crowd booed me loudly. They were so hostile … but dry. Arizona destroyed the Yankees in the first two games, and Janice said to me, “Honey, we’re beating us.”

We flew to New York and passed over lower Manhattan with a blackened hellhole where the towers had been. Game 3 presented a chaotic, scary scene. President Bush would be throwing out the first pitch, yet no one really wanted him there. It wasn’t personal; we were already terrified, and the additional security just made everything seem scarier. Streets were sealed off, metal detectors were everywhere, and armed police officers guarded the perimeter with German shepherds, the canine symbol of fear. Standing outside the stadium, we watched the president’s helicopter entourage approach. There were five or six. One was a hospital chopper, which was so encouraging (what were they expecting?), and the others acted out a sort of three-card monte: they circled one another over and over, trying to confuse a would-be assassin. Which one had the president in it? This one? That one? Guess again?

Finally we were in the ballpark, the atmosphere alive but different. The Yankees were down two games to none and struggling, but they were back home. On everybody’s minds was one terrible question: Would there be some kind of attack tonight? We’d never thought like that before, but this was our world now. Janice and I were guests of the Steinbrenners’ that night, sitting in a row with Donald Trump, Regis Philbin, and Henry Kissinger, not exactly bleacher creatures. From our vantage point, we could see gunmen with high-powered rifles on the roof of the stadium inching into position as Bob Sheppard, the voice of the Yankees, introduced President Bush. The president walked out there like John Wayne, stood on the mound, and held up the baseball in defiance of the terrorists, as chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” echoed throughout the Bronx and the rest of the free world. When he threw a perfect strike, it was an electric moment.

Minutes later, the president walked into Steinbrenner’s suite, where I was now at the bar, ordering something that might calm me down. “Billy C!” he hollered, sounding as if he were in a musical. “How about my fastball?” I’m thinking, How about finding bin Laden? He boasted that he’d thrown the strike while wearing a bulletproof vest—we were chatting like two fraternity brothers and not the president of the United States, who was about to lead the country into war, and a citizen who thought that was a bad idea. He settled in a few rows behind me and my new pals Donnie, Reeg, and Hank.

In the fourth inning, a video of me appeared on the stadium’s big screen. It felt kind of out-of-body to be sitting there watching my image as I talked about what great fans New Yorkers were and I looked down to where my dad and my brothers and I had sat so many years ago, at our first game. This misty reverie was interrupted by “Billy C’s on the big scoreboard!” It was W again. At that moment, he seemed more like the president of the Dukes of Hazzard.

He then rose and told us he had to get to a “meetin’” and that there was a lot of work to do. I asked Kissinger if Nixon had had any “meetin’s” and he said, “No, only martinis, and then he’d call me something anti-Semitic.” Moments after the president left, a crew of men with large electric drills came down the aisles and removed the front wall of the box we were sitting in. It was a sheet of three-quarter-inch bulletproof steel that none of us had realized was there. The men carried it out, following the president and his staff. Trump shook his head, Kissinger kind of smiled, but Regis stood up and screamed, “Where the hell are you going with that? What about us?”

The Yankees won, and the crucial Game 4 was the next day, which was also Halloween. As Janice and I were on our way to the stadium, my brother Joel called and told me that our mom had had a stroke and was in Long Beach Medical Center’s emergency room. We turned around and drove out there immediately. The sight of kids wearing their Halloween masks, strolling the neighborhoods, seemed ironic now, as the mask I wore was one of fear and concern.

We spent much of the night there as she labored to make sense of what had happened to her. The next morning, I was told not to spend too much time with her as it was too draining and she needed to rest.

The Yankees had won the game that night in a miracle finish, and now the series was tied. For the only time I can remember, the country was pulling for the Yankees to win. I am not a very religious man, though I love my religion. I am not one who prays in a synagogue when things get overwhelming. After the daytime visit with my mother at the hospital, I found myself needing a place to go, and the only one I could think of was Yankee Stadium. I went to the ballpark late that afternoon and just sat there, alone in the empty stadium.
Dad,
I thought,
if you’re anywhere near me, I really need you now
.
Help her get through this. Give me the strength I need to help her.
That night the Yankees won another miracle game, and as we filed out, George Steinbrenner confronted me. “What’s wrong? I can tell something’s not right,” he said.