They went to sleep Monday in the bliss of a pennant race. They awoke Tuesday to the horror of a war.

Some were in airplanes, flying to airports that were closing beneath them, traveling to games that wouldn't be played.

Others were just like the rest of us, spellbound and horrified and glued to a telephone, a television or a computer screen.

	“	Every day, I wake up and I can't wait to get to the ballpark. Today, I woke up to see something like this. I've been in shock all day. Baseball is the last thing on my mind. ”
		— Oakland's F.P. Santangelo

This was the great American sport of baseball on what should have been a glorious Tuesday in September. One moment, it was the best time of the year. The next, it was all reduced to trivia, all of it -- Barry Bonds, the National League wild-card race, the Mariners' pursuit of the 1906 Cubs, everything we used to care about.

In the eloquent words of Phillies outfielder Doug Glanville, this was one Tuesday in September when "baseball just disappeared."

Oakland A's utility man F.P. Santangelo was jarred awake Tuesday by the sound of his hotel telephone ringing at 7:30 a.m. On the line was his wife, Cindy, just calling because she had to call, because wives needed husbands to speak to on this surreal Tuesday morning.

"Here I am, on probably the best baseball team I've ever been on," Santangelo said, "with the greatest group of guys I've ever been around. Every day, I wake up and I can't wait to get to the ballpark. Today, I woke up to see something like this. I've been in shock all day. Baseball is the last thing on my mind."

It was not a day for playing ballgames. No one had to tell any of them that.

"I know baseball has always been played during war times," said Padres coach Tim Flannery. "But today, people need to reflect on where we are headed as a people on this planet. What we need today is prayer."

Games were cancelled -- for who knows how many days. Stadiums were closed. Team offices shut down. An entire season, an entire industry, literally froze in place.

Giants reliever Wayne Gomes is in Houston with the Giants, but much of his family is in Boston.

"The more I watched the news, the more scared I got and the more I started to realize how what we do for a living is so minimal compared to the greater scheme of things in life," Gomes said. "I didn't feel too secure about anything today. I tried to call all my friends in New York and I talked to most of them. I never watch the news all day, and now I don't want to leave my room. All I want to do is watch ABC."

Early indications were that Wednesday's games were also unlikely to be played. Beyond that, it was hard to say. But several baseball people were forecasting a complete wipeout of all games before Friday, without knowing whether those games would, or even could, be made up.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said he could only take this a day at a time. But one day in time isn't going to make baseball seem any more significant Wednesday than it was Tuesday.

So will it feel right to be throwing baseballs around by Thursday? By Friday? How does he judge these things?

In 1989, then-commissioner Fay Vincent took the same tact in deciding the fate of the World Series in the Bay Area after it was interrupted by an earthquake. Vincent went day-by-day for four days, then postponed the Series' resumption for another five days.

So that was a nine-day stoppage for an earthquake. What, then, is an appropriate delay following what was, essentially, a national earthquake?

"I believe we are a social institution," Selig told the Associated Press. "We have a lot of responsibilities, but above all, we have a responsibility to act in a manner befitting a social institution."

But with so many factors to consider -- balancing pennant races, home-run history and playoff dates against such overwhelming national tragedy -- he is in a position where almost no decision will feel like the right decision to many people.

"There's a whole array of baseball things that will be affected," said Glanville, who also serves as the Phillies' player representative. "So it's going to be a mess. But our mess seems so small compared to all the other messes (in the real world)."

The sheer paralysis of the national transportation network is going to be an immediate problem. Many teams in the National League were off Monday. Several players, agents and club officials were known to be trying to travel to games Tuesday and were either rerouted or never left the ground.

There were reports that the Giants, who were in Houston, were mulling taking a bus to San Francisco if their series with the Astros is cancelled.

Seth Levinson, a New York-based agent who can see the World Trade Center from his office in Brooklyn, was in an airplane flying from Newark to Miami when the pilot made a chilling announcement.

"He told us all planes in the air, across the country, were required to land immediately," Levinson said. "We were 65 miles outside Charleston, South Carolina, and that's where we landed."

He then rented a car and began driving back to New York -- a trip of nearly 800 miles. But as harrowing as his day was, it paled in comparison to the horror experienced by his wife, Paula. She works two blocks from the World Trade Center and witnessed an American tragedy with her own eyes.

She was watching from her office window when that plane slammed into the second tower, so close she could read the "American Airlines" logo on the side.

"All the lights went out in her building," Levinson said. "Her building started to shake. The soot was so thick, she said you couldn't see more than two or three feet in front of you as they were being evacuated. And when they got out on the street, it was like a page from a Stephen King novel. All they heard was sirens. Everyone around them was shocked and frightened. They were out there on the street when they watched the first building collapse."

Paula Levinson made it home OK. Her husband was still driving at last report. And that was just one freeze frame of one baseball family whose lives were directly touched by this sad, awful, unforgettable day. There were others.

Devil Rays scout Mel Zitter had an appointment in the World Trade Center -- on Wednesday.

Glanville was friendly with the guys who ran a health club on the top floor of one of the World Trade Center towers. They were walking toward their building when the first plane hit.

Agent Rex Gary got a frantic call this morning from the mother of Yankees rookie Nick Johnson, wondering how close Johnson's midtown hotel was to the World Trade Center.

And there were hundreds of stories just like that one to remind one and all that nobody would have to look very far to find someone we know who was touched by this day's events.

"I woke up thinking about the Braves," said Glanville, whose team was supposed to begin a theoretically critical three-game series in Atlanta on Tuesday. "But now all I'm thinking about is my family and all the people I know in the area. It's terrible.

"New York is my home city. I grew up in Teaneck, right across the river. I can't imagine looking at the New York skyline and not seeing the World Trade Center. This whole day just seems like something out of a movie."

But it's also a day that makes us reflect on baseball's place in the fabric of American life. There will come a time when baseball games will have meaning again, when it will feel right to care again about Barry and the pennant races and who ought to win those MVP and Cy Young awards.

That time wasn't Tuesday, though. Tuesday was a time to care about people, about human beings, about life and love, about war and death.

So several players actually sent emails to their fellow players, urging them to give blood.

Dodgers pitcher Terry Mulholland contacted me, just to spread the message that "a pennant race is inconsequential at this time. Please use your journalistic resources to urge the many healthy, able-bodied atheletes in our country to immediately and unselfishly donate blood to their local blood banks."

So we've done just that. Meanwhile, the baseball people around us pondered whether baseball would ever feel quite the same again.

"There will come a time," Santangelo said. "Who knows when it's going to be? But baseball is good for people. And whenever we get around to playing it again, baseball will help people heal -- because it always has. It's part of our history. It's part of our past. It's just what James Earl Jones said it was in 'Field of Dreams.' Hopefully, it will help us -- and help everybody -- when the time is right. Just not now."

Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.