In the days following terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, sports might have seemed trivial and irrelevant. But Nine Innings from Ground Zero demonstrates how New Yorkers, in fact, embraced baseball with a cathartic passion, turning Yankees and Mets games into spontaneous rituals of grief and showcases for resilience and the restoration of normalcy. Off the field, both teams found a way to comfort the city to the extent they could, visiting firefighters and relatives of the dead; the Yankees’ Derek Jeter personally reached out to the young daughter of one of the pilots killed by hijackers. The Yankees’ ride to the World Series that year is covered extensively here, and the team’s up-and-down dramas playing against Phoenix coincide with such off-field horrors as an anthrax scare and more warnings of terrorism. Outstanding game footage and interwoven analysis of baseball action and real-world events make Nine Innings unique.