On a solemn anniversary, a Subway Series and a father’s second calling

Twenty-five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Yankee Stadium again became a place where baseball and remembrance shared the same field. Before the Yankees hosted the Mets in the opener of a Subway Series weekend, the club marked the anniversary with first-responder caps in the clubhouse, a wreath laid in Monument Park, and ceremonial first pitches thrown by children who lost parents that day.

Among the pregame acknowledgments was Clay Bellinger, the former Yankees utilityman and father of current Yankees outfielder Cody Bellinger. Clay wore pinstripes from 1999 through 2001 and was on the roster when the towers fell. In the days after the attacks, he joined teammates on a visit to Ground Zero — a memory his son has described as “pretty surreal.”

Cody was 6 that September. He has said he remembers little beyond being taken out of school and his parents, Clay and Jennifer, trying to make the day feel ordinary. Friday, wearing an FDNY cap and swinging a custom FDNY bat, he hit a three-run homer in a 6-4 Yankees win. The tribute was for first responders and for his father.

Clay’s baseball career ended after the 2004 season. After a brief turn in real estate, friends from the game began testing for fire departments. He went on ride-alongs, liked the work, and pursued it. The process took about two years. He was hired by the Gilbert Fire Department in Arizona, where the family had settled, and he remains an active firefighter there. He has described the job as the opposite of a desk: out in the community, different every day, built around a crew that feels, he has said, a little like a clubhouse.

That second career is often mentioned alongside the 2001 season, but the link is not one either Bellinger has drawn in public. Cody has said he has never asked his father whether the attacks influenced the decision to become a firefighter. Clay has not offered a public comment on the question. What is documented is simpler: a former big-leaguer who wanted more time with his children after years of travel, who found a line of work that still asked for teamwork, and who has stayed on the job.

Gilbert is not New York. The house Clay reports to is an Arizona station, not an FDNY firehouse. Friday’s ceremony still placed him in the city where he once played through a wounded autumn, and where his son now plays on the anniversary. Other members of the 2001 Yankees were on hand as well, a reminder that the club’s history that year is inseparable from the city’s.

Friday night was less about box scores than about how New York still folds memory into ordinary rituals — a first pitch, a cap, a father standing near the field his son now patrols. The unanswered question about why Clay chose the fire service remains unanswered. The fact of the choice does not. A man who was a Yankee on Sept. 11 later spent his working life answering alarms. On the 25th anniversary, the Stadium made room for both chapters at once.