Former BriSox pitcher was in New York on Sept. 11

Poor weather drifted into Cleveland late on the night of September 10, 2001 with rain and fog hampering the scheduled departure of several flights on the fall evening.

No delays were going to bother Dan Wright.

Life was good for the Chicago White Sox rookie pitcher.

He had been in the major leagues for less than two months, having been promoted from the minor leagues back in July.

His big league debut had come at storied Fenway Park in Boston.

In just his third game at the highest level, the former Sullivan South High School star had carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning in a victory against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

And he had just dominated the Cleveland Indians on the shores of Lake Erie. The right-hander had yielded just one run over seven efficient innings, stifling a loaded lineup.

“It felt good,” Wright told a reporter from the Associated Press shortly after beating Cleveland. “It’s always good to go up against a team as good as the Indians – so solid.”

Now, he sat in an airport as new teammates – guys like Ray Durham, Jose Canseco, Paul Konerko and Carlos Lee – mulled around, waiting for the weather to clear so they could head to New York City. The next day a three-game series with the vaunted Yankees would begin.

The team’s charter flight was eventually cleared for takeoff shortly after midnight. The entourage of White Sox arrived in NYC during the wee hours of September 11. After checking into the team hotel near Grand Central Station, an exhausted Wright went straight to bed.

Little did he know that a few hours later his first glimpses of New York would come on the darkest day in the city’s history.

Welcome to New York

Wright has always been a country boy.

He was born and raised in Arkansas, but moved to Kingsport prior to his junior year of high school. He had become a star athlete at South, starting at quarterback for the Rebels’ football team and amassing impressive statistics on the pitcher’s mound.

A stellar career at the University of Arkansas had followed. After being a second-round draft pick of the White Sox, he spent time at minor league stops in Bristol, Burlington, Iowa, Winston-Salem, N.C., and Birmingham, Ala.

Big-city life wasn’t exactly his thing, you could say.

In 2001, he was still adjusting to his new home in Chicago.

The morning of September 11 marked his first day in the Big Apple.

It began with an ominous message.

“I got a phone call and it was one of my teammates who said ‘Hey, did you see that? They flew a plane into the World Trade Center.’ It was early in the morning and I hung up the phone and rolled over and went back to sleep,” Wright said. “I remember sitting there waking up. I was kind of confused and then I realized where I was. I was wondering how far I was from it and was trying to put it all together.

“I went down to the lobby. There was hardly anybody walking on the streets, which I thought was weird.”

Pretty soon Wright found out what had happened. Two planes, piloted by terrorists, had flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center. Thousands were dead.

“I really didn’t grasp what exactly was going on until later in the morning. Then everything started coming together,” Wright said. “From then on, it was pretty scary.”

Wright and his teammates could walk to the corner of the adjacent street where they were staying. From that vantage point, they could see the smoke billowing from Ground Zero.

“It was awful,” Wright said. “I just remember the feeling of panic that everybody had for the people that lived there. People were coming back up the street that had been there. Their cars were covered in ash or whatever it was.”

It also caused another problem as members of the White Sox tried desperately to reach their families.

“I remember the phones wouldn’t work.” Wright said. “The cell phones were jammed up. I remember my family had trouble getting ahold of me.”

Eventually Wright’s phone rang. It was his aunt calling to check on him.

“They were all obviously just worried sick,” Wright said. “They didn’t know where we were staying.”

Wright alerted her he was fine and discussed the day’s events. Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig had postponed all the league’s games indefinitely.

Wright would be glued to the television set like the rest of the country. Mainly, he and his teammates were quarantined in the hotel.

“There wasn’t much that was open,” Wright said. “A lot of the city had shut down.”

The group from Chicago would eventually be cleared to leave the city via bus.

“We loaded it down,” Wright said. “Some people had their families and we got as many people as we could on the bus and went straight through. We got a police escort that led us. We got to leave before some other people.”

The departure would provide one of the most vivid – and surreal – scenes for Wright as he left the chaos behind.

“I remember driving across the bridge, leaving New York,” Wright said. “This was a day or two later and it was still smoking. Not one person on the bus said one word for about an hour and a half.”

Looking back

Wright and the White Sox would return to New York a few weeks later. The series that had been scheduled for September 11-13 had been reset for the first week of October.

“We actually stayed at a different hotel that time,” Wright recalled.

Wright started against the Yankees on October 2 at famed Yankee Stadium. The buzz at the ballpark was a little different in what would be Wright’s final start of the 2001 season.

A rookie year that had begun with personal glory, now ended in a city that was healing from a tragedy.

“It was weird,” Wright said. “Everybody at that time was on alert still and there was increased security. It was a weird feeling going back.”

Shoulder injuries would spell the end of Wright’s baseball career in 2006. He appeared in 70 career big league games, going 20-26 with a 5.65 ERA over that time.

He’s now a scout with the Philadelphia Phillies and is busy traveling the country, while also raising a family.

Wherever he is today, he’s sure to think back to where he was a decade ago and how his first trip to New York unfolded.

“I can’t believe it’s been 10 years,” Wright said.

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