Royals’ Mike Moustakas, born on Sept. 11, shares his perspective on tragic day

Early on the morning of his 13th birthday, the boy his family then and now calls “Mikey” woke up carefree, happy and excited as he got ready for school.

Then he walked into the living room of his family’s home and saw his parents riveted to the TV and weeping at the sight of airplanes flying into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Through their tears and bewilderment, they explained to the overwhelmed child, as best they could, what they understood of the implications.

The shattering thought of what surely would be thousands of innocents lost in such a sinister way marked a new day of infamy and the end of a certain form of innocence for all.

In a sense, even in the shock of the moment, Mike Moustakas understood all that.

Before the death toll would be known to be more than 3,000 people, including more than 400 police officers and firefighters who mostly were running into the infernos people were fleeing, Moustakas started crying with his parents.

And he thought about how if he couldn’t make a go of baseball, already his longtime dream, that he’d be proud to be like his two uncles in the Marines and serve his country in the Armed Forces.

“Still think about it,” Moustakas, the Royals third baseman, said late Wednesday as the team prepared to travel to Baltimore for a weekend series.

That day explains why over the years Moustakas also alternately has expressed interest in becoming a firefighter or working in law enforcement, like Nick Doscher, a former teammate in the Royals minor-league system.

Doscher, Moustakas’ roommate with the Class A Burlington Bees in 2008, became the best man in his wedding and now is a New York Port Authority officer assigned to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

“He’s going to show me around it next time I’m there,” said Moustakas, who bears a tattoo commemorating the date on his right forearm.

That appreciation of the meaning of the day is why Moustakas no longer celebrates his birthday.

Sure, he might have a quiet dinner with his wife, Stephanie, the night before or after if the schedule accommodates. Acknowledgments aren’t unwelcome, and maybe he’ll gradually open presents he gets sent.

And while he knows of others who share the birthday and treat it the same solemn way, he doesn’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t.

But to him the date can only be about mourning and recognition of all who defend our freedom, or choose careers in law enforcement or firefighting, making their own lives secondary to saving others.

“It’s not a day to celebrate,” he said. “It’s a day in American history we’ll never forget, and it’s good that we remember it as a country.”

Eerie quirk of the birthday notwithstanding, Moustakas knows he’s just another citizen in the context of this. He doesn’t mistake it for being one directly impacted by it in the way that the families of thousands will forever be left to reconcile.

Instead, he stands as a conscientious representative of us all when it comes to a day everyone of an age of consciousness can remember just what you were doing as it unfolded.

Much of the sports world went silent that week, you’ll remember, including Major League Baseball.

Even the NFL, which had continued playing days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, said it was pausing to grieve and reflect.

Sports, too, would play a role in our gradual recovery.

Stirring scenes from the Yankees playing in the 2001 World Series and the New York Marathon were a psychological salve.

So was the spectacle of President George W. Bush striding to the center of the Olympic Stadium in Salt Lake City at the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Games.

Bush, Olympic officials and members watched eight Olympians and members of the New York City police and fire departments carry out the tattered flag found in the rubble at the World Trade Center.

It was a touching, galvanizing and even healing scene.

Yet it also was one whose soundtrack was the clatter of Black Hawk helicopters overhead and whose backdrop was snipers atop the stadium to provide security.

In some ways, even 13-plus years after those Olympics, that setting remains a microcosm of all we have to balance in a post-9/11 world and how to remember that day without being enslaved by it.

“I didn’t fully understand it when I was that age,” Moustakas said.

But he understood it well enough.

This story was originally published September 10, 2015 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Royals’ Mike Moustakas, born on Sept. 11, shares his perspective on tragic day."