Most people reading this weren’t alive or have little recollection of Dec. 7, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor is a documentary or a page in a history book.

Today, however, is our day that will live in infamy. Sept. 11, 2001, the day only everything changed. We lived death, some of us for the first time, scarring our blissful ignorance.

This is a significant day of remembrance. True remembrance. Not some hollow “NEVER FORGET” post on Facebook. This is a day to spend some time in thought. And in appreciation of the men and women who reminded us courage and heroism happen at Ground Zeroes, not home plates or the end zones.

Maybe that’s what I remember most about Sept. 11 and the ensuing days and weeks. For the first time, sports assumed their proper precinct. Sports: the outlet. For win or lose, not life or death. Because we had just seen life and death as we never had before.

It began at Shea Stadium when Mike Piazza hit a home run for the Mets in their first home game after Sept. 11. The Mets trailed at the time in the eighth inning until Piazza hit “a baseball whose flight carried an entire city’s emotional baggage,” the Associated Press story reported. Rarely had sports been more real or more timely, their ability to transcend everyday life and give us moments to believe in something bigger.

It continued with a wonderful World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks. President Bush’s first pitch, late rallies by the Yankees, the quintessential rally by the D-Backs in Game Seven. Ultimate theater.

Fan and pundits alike also realized that even as sports lend themselves to such metaphorical richness, perhaps referring to sporting events as “wars” wasn’t such a good idea anymore. We watched war, or at least a version thereof, on the news every night. Not exactly folks running up and down a basketball court.

Now it’s 14 years later. Sadly, most of the lessons have been unlearned. War metaphors are back. Sports aren’t an outlet anymore as much as they define the society’s decay. Invective, anti-social media, cheating … and on the band plays.

Sadly, I can’t agree with Charles Pierce, who wrote the following in Grantland recently: “Assuming you have the intellectual capacity God gave rice pudding, when are sports not in ‘perspective’ vis-à-vis war, peace, economic cataclysm, or criminal offenses?”

True enough, I hate the “it puts the whole thing in perspective” line, too. Complete cliché that sounds good and means nothing. Except that in this case, we’re losing our “perspective” with sports vis-à-vis war, peace, economic cataclysm, or criminal offenses. Just listen to the war metaphors, gaggles of criminal offenses and excuses for said criminals made in the name of winning.

And then think about how, for a few weeks after Sept. 11, we all had it about right.

I don’t know where we lost our way. Perhaps it was inevitable. Americans have short memories and low thresholds for inconvenience. So Sept. 11 happened. We retaliated. So maybe security lines are longer at airports now, but what really frosts my adenoids is how those (expletives) could they say those things about Tom Brady!

I suppose it’s the greatest compliment to our way of life that we can still fret over sporting events. Sure beats worrying about clean drinking water and whether Big Brother is ambling up the front walk. But sometime today, if you grab a moment to think, ask yourself if you are an offender.

Do you hide behind a screen name to ooze your venom? Are you a jerk at your kids’ games? Have you ever enabled an athlete’s unacceptable behavior in the name of winning?

I bet you just thought of somebody — or somebodies — who were just described perfectly.

That’s because they’re all over the place.

Today is the day to think about Sept. 11 more than any other day of the year. We mourn the dead and honor the brave. And we should also recall a time in our lives when we all figured out where sports belong.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro. Twitter: @BCgenius