Minneapolis ? It is jarring to think about baseball and hear sirens. For many of us baseball is a sanctuary.

Wednesday, if you were headed to the Metrodome to watch the Twins, or sitting in the stands, you became aware of sirens. The Interstate Hwy. 35W bridge had collapsed. People, some of whom were headed to the ballpark, were dying. This was a Minnesota tragedy, and it was playing out blocks from the Dome.

Nobody wanted to play the game. Players all reached for their cell phones and called loved ones, hoping they weren’t near the bridge. The front office decided the game must go on, to keep traffic from building up around the bridge. This was the right decision, and yet it led to a strange night, a baseball game a mile from people trapped by rubble.

Thursday was to be a great day to be a baseball fan in Minnesota. Johan Santana would take the Metrodome mound, and the Twins would break ground at the new ballpark site.

Then the bridge fell, and late Wednesday night, Twins’ players and coaches spoke quietly about preparing for and playing a game while worrying about their families, and about the people killed on the bridge.

Pat Neshek, a Brooklyn Park native, said he wasn’t sure if many of his teammates understood the magnitude of the tragedy. Neshek got it; he teared up as he talked about his concern for his wife.

Michael Cuddyer said the tragedy put “sports into perspective,” and at that place and time, this sounded like the right thing for an athlete to say.

I shared the same experience as thousands of Minnesotans who didn’t lose a loved one on the bridge. I was working downtown when I heard sirens screaming. I watched part of a ballgame at the Metrodome while the Twins announced road closings and alternate routes.

I traded calls with members of my family. And then I put sports into perspective in my own way.

Wednesday afternoon, I was contemplating criticizing Twins management for its lethargy. By Wednesday night, I was happy knowing that, whenever the Twins resumed their season, life in Minneapolis, for those of us lucky enough to be insulated from the death and destruction, will regain some of its normalcy.

Summer ballgames are part of our lives and always will be. And sports can mean even more than movies, or sit-coms, concerts or plays.

If you want to put sport into perspective in the wake of a tragedy, consider it one of the last unifying aspects of American life.

When people use their computers, their remote controls, their I-pods, they seek personal niches. The other day I looked at another car in traffic and saw a driver presumably listening to his favorite radio station while the passengers all listened to personal MP-3 players.

We live in an age of extreme freedom of choice. We are privileged. We also have lots of excuses not to talk to each other, not to care what our neighbor or co-worker thinks. For many of us, sports are what we have in common.

What in Minnesota, other than our local sports teams, can command the attention of millions of people hundreds of days a year? What else can persuade thousands of unaffiliated people to flock to the same venue wearing the same colors? What, other than the weather, provides easier entry into a conversation with an acquaintance?

Yes, sports and sports writers and sports debates can be shallow or overwrought. These silly ballgames, though, can stand as symbols of normalcy and community in a splintered world.