Death of a Baseball Player
This morning I sat in the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Library at the Baseball Hall of Fame, looking at files of the players from the 1978 Red Sox and Yankees teams. I spent the most time with that of Thurman Munson, the great Yankee catcher who died tragically in a plane crash in the summer of 1979. Munson was my childhood hero, and his death devastated me, so the time I spent poring over the articles and clips about him wasn't just professional. And indeed, it was a little emotional to re-read the details of Munson's plane crash, to look at the photos of his burned-out plane.
This afternoon, it happened again.
Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into the side of an apartment building in Manhattan, killing himself and his instructor, and possibly people who were in the apartment at the time.
Just about a month ago, the Times ran a piece on Lidle and
his newfound love of flying.
A player-pilot is still a sensitive topic for the Yankees, whose captain, Thurman Munson, was killed in the crash of a plane he was flying in 1979. Lidle, acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies on July 30, said his plane was safe.
“The whole plane has a parachute on it,” Lidle said. “Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you’re up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly.”
Sadly for Cory Lidle, his instructor, his family, and anyone else who may have been hurt, the parachute didn't work.
