'Hell On Earth': How Former Minor Leaguer Pete Murphy Survived 9/11

Former minor league baseball player Pete Murphy was in the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11.

Pete delivered, tossing a two-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts. A scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates was there, and he took notice."I got a call from my brother who said, ‘Well, the Pirates just called the house and said they drafted you in the 23rd round,'"Pete says."So I proceeded to walk into my boss, [I] said, 'Been nice working here for the two or three weeks' — whatever it was — but I gotta go.

"The best part was always coming up the Jersey Turnpike and when you can see the twin towers. And I knew I was home when I could start seeing the skyline of New York," Pete says.In 1991, Pete was stuck in Double-A with little hope of breaking through. He gave up his Major League aspirations. He moved back to New York City and put his computer science degree to use. In 1995, he got a job in application development for the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers.

"Everybody's kind of talking about, you know, 'What was that? What was that?'"Pete says."And eventually we started getting reports on the pagers that the tower was hit by a Cessna. And everybody, when they saw that, they're like, 'There is no way that was a Cessna that hit this building.'""People from the upper floors started coming down, like, the injured people.

By the time Pete reached the ground floor, he’d heard that this was an act of terrorism. The lobby was almost unrecognizable from the damage."They didn't want anybody walking across the plaza. Because, at that time, the jumpers from up top had started also," Pete says."That was kind of the first exposure I had to really the scale of what was going on," Pete says."There was blood all over the street.

"I still had kind of the shadow of the twin towers being there — like, in my eyes, they were still there," Pete says."And the smoke was coming up kind of through the shadow of the twin towers.""We were kind of very numb," Pete says."[Mary] was kind of adjusting to me not being around anymore. So she was kinda just pinching me a bit. We hugged. And our lives have not been the same since.

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