MESA, Ariz. — Yankees first baseman Tino Martinez and the team’s young bullpen catcher, Mike Borzello, were in the middle of New York City on that sunny Tuesday morning that turned to smoke and horror in an instant.
“In a half-hour, our lives changed,” said Borzello, now the catching and run-prevention strategist on the Cubs’ coaching staff.
“The buildings come down. We’re trapped in Manhattan. We don’t know if we’re getting attacked.”
When baseball shut down last week because of the coronavirus pandemic — along with every other major professional sports league and the NCAA — that was one of the first flashes through Borzello’s emotions: the terrorist attacks on Sept.