IT’S A SUNNY day in late August 1991. As fans file into the bleachers of Howard J. Lamade Stadium, home of the Little League World Series, 12-year-old Michael Cammarata stands on a hill overlooking the outfield. His team-issued trucker hat sits slightly above his forehead, casting a shadow over full, freckled cheeks flushed from hours outdoors.
“Who’s your role model?” an ESPN reporter asks for a taped television interview.
“Mattingly,” Michael immediately replies, raising his eyebrows for emphasis. “Don Mattingly,” the beloved first baseman who spent 14 seasons with the New York Yankees during the 1980s and ’90s. “He’s like one of the best baseball players around.”
Practically a god to a young right fielder from Staten Island, New York. The South Shore American Little League All-Star team had recently arrived in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to represent the East on youth baseball’s biggest stage.
Watching Michael from the stands was his older brother, Joe. Though 15 months Michael’s senior, Joe grew up in awe of the inexplicable ease with which his brother seemed to move. The first time Michael picked up a golf club, he swung it like a natural. In a room full of strangers, he quickly made friends. Full of confidence. Full of finesse. Full of life.
“Stepping into it for the first time as if he’s done it for centuries,” Joe says.
The two were best friends. They played baseball and ice hockey together when age groups allowed, and engaged in a healthy sibling rivalry when they didn’t.
By young adulthood, the brothers had transferred their ambitions from sports to civil service. Michael had earned a spot as a probationary firefighter for the New York City Fire Department, and Joe became a New York City police officer while he waited for his own call from the FDNY.
Both were on duty the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
JOE, 49, FLIPS open a faded red scrapbook, its battered front cover held on by a stud.
“Wow,” he says with a faint smile, scanning over a summer’s worth of newspaper clippings taped to yellowed pages. “This one really brings back memories.”
After a few moments, he pauses on a page marked with pale, pink highlighter.
“‘Mike Cammarata belted a solo home run to lead the South Shore American All-Star team to a 3-1 win over Haverstraw, New York,” Joe reads aloud from a Staten Island Advance article. “‘Cammarata added an insurance run when he led off the fourth by blasting a 1-2 pitch over the fence in left-center for his second home run in postseason play.'”
The album chronicles the South Shore American’s 1991 Little League run. Joe attended every game, one of hundreds who faithfully tracked the team’s progress.
Youth baseball is sacred on Staten Island. The borough of approximately 500,000 has sent seven teams to the Little League World Series in its eight-decade history. From 1990 to 2019, the South Shore region fielded two competitive all-star teams, featuring the best players from local squads. Michael stood out for his consistency at the plate, his powerful arm and his tenacious personality.
“One of those kids that you’d say on the baseball field was brave, right? Diving all over the place, hustling from base to base,” says Mike Wissel, who played with Michael in Williamsport. “The kind of kid you want as your teammate.”
Michael helped the South Shore American finish second in the country and third in the world. First, the team won Staten Island. Then, New York City and New York State. After claiming the East Region in Bristol, Connecticut, the team traveled to Pennsylvania.
The Cammaratas also made the trip. Joseph Sr. drove the family’s 1988 Jeep Cherokee. Joe’s mother, Linda, rode in the passenger seat, while he sat in the back. The boys’ sister, Kim, eight years older than Michael, met the family in town.
“I was his biggest fan,” Joe says. “I was just blessed to be along for the ride.”
Representing the East, the South Shore American beat a team from Ohio, representing the Central Region, to advance to the U.S. Championship game. There, they fell to a team from California, representing the West. But back on Staten Island, the players were treated as if they had won it all.
Michael continued playing baseball through middle school. By 10th grade, however, he had hung up his glove for good. “He was a great baseball player,” Joe says, “but he was definitely a better hockey player.”
Michael and Joe had been skating for almost as long as they could walk. In winter, they played on a frozen pond near the house, resurfacing the ice with buckets of water and mops. During summers, they strapped on roller blades for street games with neighborhood kids. Eventually, they began competing on travel teams, excelling as defensive partners.
According to Joe, Michael became the first defenseman to earn the scoring title for the New York Ice Hockey Association (now the Staten Island Ice Hockey Association). After graduation, Michael played on the club circuit at Wagner College, ultimately training for a spot on the Bravest, the FDNY’s revered ice hockey team.
TOGETHER, MICHAEL AND Joe stood outside a shabby warehouse on Long Island, sizing up members of a small crowd. In the stifling summer heat, the group waited restlessly for an FDNY physical exam training session to begin.
Eventually, two firemen emerged from the building and explained how the morning would unfold: watch the demonstration of a job-specific task, attempt it and repeat.
“‘What am I in for?'” Joe thought to himself, nearly sick from exhaustion as he completed the exercises. “And I just remember Mike going through it with the greatest of ease, like, ‘All right, what’s next?'”
Joe says he and Michael had wanted to be firefighters since childhood, playing with toy engines in their fire truck underwear. They also made frequent visits to their uncle’s firehouse, listening to rescue stories with rapt attention.
“To us, those were the superheroes,” Joe says.
Staten Island residents have long fueled New York City’s firefighting force. Today, nearly 40% of FDNY members come from the borough that makes up just 6% of the city’s population.
The brothers, determined to join, began preparing in college, Joe at St. John’s University and Michael at Wagner. They worked on their fitness for the physical evaluation and took test prep courses for the written assessment.
On another hot summer morning, in 1999, Michael and Joe arrived at a local high school for the written exam. They were assigned to the same room and sat an arm’s length away.
The test took several hours. Michael worked to the last minute, deliberating over a specific question. At the end of the exam, as the proctor called time, he quickly altered his answer.
The candidates left the room with a copy of their responses to check against a key that would later be released. When Michael and Joe compared their work, they realized they had recorded all the same answers but one — the one Michael changed.
Joe doesn’t remember the question. But he knows it was the only question he got wrong.
Michael earned a perfect score on the physical and written exams. Joe also received full marks on the physical test, so the brothers were ranked on the FDNY eligibility list with similar point values. That single-question difference, however, resulted in nearly 1,000 spots of separation; Joe says Michael’s list number was 345, while his was 1,298. Both would have to wait until they were summoned into service, but Michael would be first.
“Mike wrote his destiny by changing that answer,” says Joe, who had joined the New York Police Department in the meantime.
Michael was sworn in to the FDNY in May 2001. His uncle, who had retired by then, gave his nephew his old badge number, 1138.
As a probationary firefighter, Michael went to work at FDNY Engine 28/Ladder 11, a firehouse on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
“I wish I could go back,” Joe says. “I wish I could be the one that got the question right.”
ONE EDGEWATER PLAZA sits on the northeast side of Staten Island, housing several units of the New York Police Department, including the team to which Joe was assigned when he joined the force. On a clear day, the unassuming office building offers an unobstructed view of the Manhattan skyline 6 miles north, across the New York Harbor.
It’s one of the first things Joe remembers about the early hours of Sept. 11.
“The most beautiful blue skies and clouds you’ve ever seen,” he says.
By 8 a.m., Michael was at the firehouse, nine weeks into his 14-week probationary assignment on the Lower East Side. That morning, he prioritized his duties over a tryout session for the FDNY hockey team.
“I knew he was going to be a great firefighter because he didn’t go to that hockey practice in Long Island that morning,” Joseph Sr. says. “He wanted to learn the job.”
Just before 9 a.m., Michael called his father. He left a voicemail explaining a plane had hit one of the two towers at the World Trade Center, and he had been dispatched to help. He ended the message with “I love you guys.” After listening to the voicemail, Joseph Sr. accidentally deleted it.
Meanwhile, Joe was on his way to work. By the time he arrived, the second plane had struck.
Joe and his team sped 2 miles up the street to the St. George Ferry Terminal. Around 9:30 a.m., they joined journalists and other rescue workers on the ferry to Manhattan. Thirty minutes later, from the deck, they watched the first tower fall.
Joe immediately thought of Michael.
“I had this feeling that came over my body that he was gone,” he says. “That something had been pulled from my soul.”
The ferry finally docked at the Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan. Joe and his team tried making their way to the World Trade Center, but piles of debris blocked their way and smoke obscured their vision. They were redirected to a command post across town, under the Manhattan Bridge, where they waited for direction.
By about 3:30 p.m., however, none had come. And Joe was done waiting. He wanted to search for Michael, but his captain ordered him to stay.
“I just remember taking off my badge, taking off my gun belt and saying, ‘I’m going. I don’t care. I’m going to go find him,'” he says.
The captain ultimately allowed Joe to travel with an escort. First, he stopped at Michael’s firehouse. Some of the men had returned, but several were still missing. Next, he went down to the World Trade Center.
“It was snowing, blizzard-style, of debris, where you couldn’t even see,” he says. “I remember inhaling it. It felt like razor blades going into my lungs.”
The ash and soot, combined with water from the fire hydrants, made a thick, ankle-deep sludge. Joe heard the distinct chirp of the motion-sensor safety devices worn by many first responders. The alarm sounds after a period of inactivity.
“I remember hearing hundreds of them, muffled under the debris,” he says. “And each of those alarms represented a trapped — a dead — firefighter, police officer, emergency service [worker].”
Joe called out for Michael. He asked if anyone had seen him. Hardly anyone paid him notice.
At 5:20 p.m., 7 World Trade Center collapsed. Joe, still searching, was across the street, about 150 feet away.
He thought: “I’m going to get killed right now looking for my brother.”
Joe made his way home to his family on Staten Island.
Years later, the family learned that Michael was helping those in 3 World Trade Center, the New York Marriott World Trade Center hotel, located between the two towers. He died when the first tower collapsed.
Of the 343 FDNY members lost on 9/11, Michael, 22, was the youngest.
JOE STANDS AT the top of the stairs of his New Jersey home in front of a wall of curated built-in shelves. Amid various objets d’art and thick-spined coffee table books are Michael’s belongings: his metal badge, shaped like an eight-pointed Maltese Cross, his baby blue backup glove inserts, and his worn, black wallet, recovered from his locker at the firehouse.
Joe leans down, retrieving the open wallet from a lower cubby. The left flap contains his brother’s credit cards, the center, another badge, and the right, Michael’s FDNY identification card.
Days after being sworn in, the probationary firefighters shaved their heads, donned their department-issued collared shirts and sat for headshots. Michael’s typically cheerful countenance has been schooled into a more serious look. His square jaw doesn’t quite distract from cheeks that still hold the softness of youth. Thick eyebrows and brown eyes complete the image that had earned him the nickname “Mikey Face.”
“He came home from the Fire Academy and told my mom, ‘Mom, we took our death picture today,'” Joe remembers with a deep sigh and shake of his head. The silence draws on, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he works to keep his composure.
A few days after 9/11, the FDNY requested the DNA of missing firefighters to build a forensic database. The Cammaratas began searching their house for something of Michael’s.
Joe heard his mother call to him from his brother’s meticulously organized bedroom. In the nightstand was a tri-folded piece of computer paper labeled, “If anything was ever to happen to me.”
Joe opened it, reading inside.
“If anything ever happens to me…
1. Take care of Jenna [Michael’s girlfriend at the time]
2. Don’t mourn as this is the career I chose
3. Make my spirit live on
4. Remember I love you all and will be waiting for you upstairs”
Signed, Michael Cammarata Shield #1138
Michael’s body was never recovered. The Cammaratas learned he had donated bone marrow to the National Marrow Donor Program while in the fire academy. By spring 2003, one year after the final column of steel had been cleared from the World Trade Center site, the Cammaratas requested possession of Michael’s only remains.
Joe remembers retrieving the donation, a velvet-lined leather box containing Michael’s bone marrow in a vial, on dry ice. When Joe got home, he placed the vial in the freezer, and spent the night sleeping sentry in the kitchen.
“That was the only trace of him, that he was ever here,” Joe says.
The next morning, he says, was Michael’s funeral. Michael’s remains were placed in a casket, next to his FDNY dress uniform, Little League World Series glove and hockey sticks.
Joe struggled with survivor’s guilt, but Michael’s letter — “Make my spirit live on” — gave him purpose. He campaigned for the street of their childhood home to bear Michael’s name. Today, on its own green and white sign beneath that of Kingdom Avenue, is Firefighter Michael Cammarata Place. Joe also wrote a book, “Face of Courage: Rise from the Rubble,” sharing Michael’s story.
Despite his family’s objections, Joe became an FDNY firefighter in January 2002.
“Mike and I set out to do that together, and it wasn’t accomplished,” he says. “And quite frankly, I wouldn’t be making his spirit live on if I didn’t do it. So, it had to get done.”
Joe wore badge No. 1138.
EVENING SHADOWS LIE long as the sun sets over Lamade Stadium. The Cammaratas walk toward the pitcher’s mound, receiving a standing ovation from fans gathered for the 2002 Little League World Series U.S. Championship game.
Joe, outfitted in his firefighter dress uniform, addresses the crowd from a lectern, his white-gloved hands resting on each side of its slanted surface.
“With character, loyalty and courage, Michael went into those buildings,” he says, referencing Little League Baseball’s then-motto. “He went above and beyond the call of duty, and gave his life to save another.”
Standing to Joe’s left is Steve Keener, Little League Baseball’s former president and CEO. When word of Michael’s death reached Williamsport, Keener was moved to act. He didn’t remember the boy who played in the tournament a decade ago, but he recognized an embodiment of the best of baseball.
“Giving your life in sacrifice to help others who are in dire need of your help is far more valuable, far more important and far more meaningful than any game you could ever win,” Keener says today.
He started with a search for Michael’s jersey, digging out the scorebook from 1991 to determine his number. Michael was listed at position No. 9, right field, wearing No. 11.
Keener called the Cammaratas to ask if the organization could retire Michael’s number and posthumously induct him into the Little League Hall of Excellence. The family agreed, and traveled to the ceremony. Joe returned four years later, when a No. 11 decal was hung on the right-field wall. To date, it is the only number retired in Williamsport.
“I feel more connected to him being there than most other places,” Joe says.
Today, Joe is an attorney representing Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York City on 9/11. Joe is also a father to a 19-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, Michael.
“‘If you keep my name alive,’ Joe hears his brother saying, ‘I’ll always be with you.'”
ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap and Gus Pfisterer contributed to this story.
