Mark Curtis of 12 News talks about covering the Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series
Mark Curtis was supposed to be on vacation.
Curtis, the longtime anchor for 12 News in Phoenix, expected to be enjoying some time off when something weird happened: The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 7 of the National League Championship. Now the team was on its way to the World Series to face the Texas Rangers.
And Curtis was on his way to Texas to cover it.
He wasn’t unhappy about it.
Curtis talked about the unlikely rise of the Diamondbacks, as well as what it was like to cover the 2001 World Series, in which Arizona beat the New York Yankees in an instant classic that, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, was about more than baseball.
The 2001 World Series was 'the great healer of a nation'
“It was it was up in the air whether or not they played it,” Curtis said. “And then they decided to go ahead and play it. And it became, you know, the great healer of a nation. It was incredible.”
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: I know you’re as surprised as I am, but at this point I think Arizona has a legitimate shot to win this.
Answer: I think so. I think the Phillies are a tougher team than the Rangers.
Q: It’s a lot different from 2001, which we were both around to cover. (Curtis is now a news anchor, but was a sports anchor then.)
A: I mark time through the ages of my kids. And they they were little in 2001. And now they're all grown and I got one married and I got a grandchild. So life has moved on. And when you look at it that way, to me, it just shows you how long it's been since the Diamondbacks have been to the World Series.
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'Ground Zero ... was just knee buckling'
Q: We both covered the Series, but you went to all the games, right? What was that like?
A: When we flew to New York, the media bus will normally go right to the hotel from the airport. And instead, they went to Ground Zero. And, and to see that … it was just knee buckling.
Q: I think things like this are almost always a cliché, but it really did seem bigger than baseball.
A: For sure. I mean, you had our country, you know, attacked at the very core of what we are, what we stand for, what we believe, with a plane going in not only to the World Trade Center buildings, but then into the Pentagon, and then the third plane that everyone thought was going to go ultimately to the Capitol that was brought down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I mean, everyone was scared there. There was nothing you could count on.
Q: Yes, so much uncertainty.
A: Certainly in our generation, you know, nothing like that had ever happened. We were born after Pearl Harbor, which was probably the last time that America had felt so vulnerable. And, and so here you are basically covering a kid's game, that because of the circumstances that became so much more.
Q: I think the fact that it was such a great Series helped make it seem so epic.
A: I think you're right. And the other factor is that it was against the Yankees. You know, if the World Series post 9/11 had been, let's say, the Diamondbacks and the Baltimore Orioles, it wouldn't have counted nearly as much in terms of the magnitude of how much more this game meant than just baseball. …
And it's Yankee Stadium, this unbelievable place where so much baseball history was made, not that far away from this smoking hole in the ground where there once stood two towers. And so I think it was all of that stuff.
Q: For those reasons, there will never be another World Series like it.
A: I sure as hell hope not. I mean, that's a scar on America that I hope we'll never see again.
Q: What was Yankee Stadium like?
A: They put the overflow media in this, what we called Grandpa's basement. It was just this old, haphazard, dark, wood-paneled room. And they put out steam tables with hotdogs and peanuts and stuff. And then they had one of those old consoles — like the first iteration of a big screen TV, but it was a console TV. And then they had these old ratty couches, and club chairs and just any furniture they could find and we all just sat down there watching.
This year's Diamondbacks are underdogs
Q: The current team has really made the most out of being underdogs. But that wasn’t the case with the 2001 team.
A: You see this team that (former owner) Jerry Colangelo is building with, you know, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling and Jay Bell, and, you know, Gonzo (Luis Gonzalez) and Tony Womack and Steve Finley … Mark Grace. You go into that clubhouse, and it's like, holy crap. You look in one corner and there's Randy Johnson. You look in another corner, there’s Mark Grace. It was just an unbelievable veterans clubhouse.
And then it's so different now in the DBacks clubhouse, with just a lot of younger guys, which gives everybody hope for the future.
Q: It was pretty crazy when Arizona won Game 6 against the Yankees, setting up the classic Game 7 finish.
A: Listen, when they came back to the Valley and they won Game 6, I'm like, Oh my God, we're gonna have a Game 7 here in the Valley that will determine whether or not Phoenix gets its first professional sports championship.
Q: It was pretty amazing.
A: My father-in-law took my son to the game. And I got a chance to run up there and sit for an inning or so with them — there was an empty seat by them. You know how it is, you get a chance to watch a World Series, it’s amazing. You get a chance to watch a World Series with your son, it's times 10.
Q: And here you are, called in from vacation.
A: That's OK. This, this doesn't happen every day
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X, formerly known as Twitter: @goodyk.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: For Mark Curtis of 12 News the 2001 World Series was 'so much more'
