Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
A small plane crashed into a high rise building on 72nd street on the east side on Manhattan this afternoon. According to reports, the plane not only belonged to Yankee pitcher Corey Lidle, but he was apparently on board and killed as well. Lidle's passport has been recovered. There may have been another Yankee on the plane too but this is not official. (My first thought is that Lidle played high school ball with Jason Giambi.) Intial reaction here in my office brought back memories of 9.11. For Yankee fans, this tragedy also brings back thoughts of Thurman Munson who was killed in a plane crash in the summer of 1979. It is foggy, almost a bluish gray, in mid-town Manhattan and it is raining as night falls. This is absolutely stunning, terrible news.
Update
5:30 p.m. The Mayor is giving a press conference. He has not released any names. Bloomberg said that the two people on the plane were the instructor and a student with about 75 hours of flying experience. According to the Mayor, the plane was small and flimsy and that it pretty much burned-up. The crash does not seem to have caused major damage to the building. Apparently the plane took off from Teterborough airport in New Jersey, circled around the Statue of Liberty a few times and then headed up the East River. Radar lost contact with it around the 59th Street Bridge. They still do not know why it turned toward Manhattan Island at 72nd street.
Last month, Tyler Kepner wrote an article about Lidle's interest in flying for the New York Times:
He earned his pilot's license last off-season and bought a four-seat airplane for $187,000. It is a Cirrus SR20, built in 2002, with fewer than 400 hours in the air.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."
Tyler Stanger, Lidle's flight instructor told Kepner:
"He was probably my best student," Stanger said in a telephone interview. "He learned very, very quickly, and a lot of it is desire. He had huge desire."Really, anyone can learn how to fly. If you can drive a bus, you can fly an airplane. But to learn quickly takes money and time. Of course, Cory had plenty of money, and it was the off-season, so he had the time."
..."On the mound, he has to hold in all the emotions and keep completely focused. It's the same thing flying: If you're in an emergency, you can't waste any time worrying. You have to take command of the situation. A lot of people I fly with don't have that mentality. Cory does."
Chilling.
http://tinyurl.com/fldgu
Just too bizarre an event.
I have friends who live in the very next building. Haven't been able to reach them yet.
too sad .... :-(
The FBI found his passport in the street. They also said they got a Mayday from him before the crash.
Ballplayers and airplanes . . .
I'm stunned speechless.
Speechless.
I hope Lidle's wife and child can find some comfort and that the people in that building can get their lives back together.
What an awful thing.
The plane had a special safety feature - a parachute. But they were probably too low for it to work properly.
I stopped at my uncle's on the way back home. We talked about it for a bit, then he gets a call; he's talking and I hear him say 'it was Corey Lidle?' I ran down here to the public library and now I see this.
I do not have words now. This feels like a bad dream.
Wow. I still can't believe this.
RIP, Cory and his instructor.
===
A law enforcement official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lidle was on the plane. And Federal Aviation Administration records showed the single-engine plane was registered to the athlete, who just days ago — after the Yankees' humiliating elimination from the playoffs — told reporters that he was getting his pilot's license.
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Just can't resist getting a dig in, can they?
"Right now, I am really in a state of shock, as I am sure the entire MLB family is. My thoughts are with Cory's relatives and the loved ones of the others who were injured or killed in this plane crash. I have known Cory and his wife, Melanie, for over 18 years and watched his son grow up. We played high school ball together and have remained close throughout our careers. We were excited to be reunited in New York this year and I am just devastated to hear this news."
46 Throwing the dig at the Yankees in there shows a complete lack of class, but it is not at all unexpected.
I'm hearing an interview with a woman across the street who witnessed the crash. It's on the local ESPN affiliate!
"I am shocked by this devastating news. Spending the last few months as Cory's teammate, I came to know him as a great man. While he was known as a baseball player, he was, more importantly, a husband and father and, at a time like this, I want to share my deepest sympathies with his wife Melanie, his son Christopher and all those who know and loved him."
www.ballbug.com/
RIP Corey.
Now and then, I flipped to Michael Kay. First he was talking to Tiki Barber - laughing and joking about a Michael Jackson concert that Tiki apparently attended with Michael Strahan. A little while later he and his cohorts were talking about their predictions for the NLCS, complete with their usual shtick. Then there was a call which started with condolences to the Lidle family - then went directly to talking about some woman who was HOT! hotter than Jennifer Aniston! They laughed about that for a while as well.
When I did hear him talk about Lidle, he was woefully uninformed. It seemed no one had even listened to Bloomberg's press conference, because they were lacking even the basic facts that had come out there.
It was really an appalling, rather repulsive showing. I don't demand all somber, all the time - but Michael Kay is always talking about his role as a journalist, and maybe just once he should act like one.
As for the other, well, I had no intention of posting it, and I suppose I shouldn't have responded. But I did think it, and I can't be the only one.
Please, everyone.
That's enough.
Until then, the best course of action is to ignore.
Luis Gonzalez, 23, was one of several construction workers and others viewing plans for renovating an apartment in the Belaire when they looked out the window and saw a plane headed their way.
"It was coming right at us, directly at us at the floor where we were working on," he said.
They could see the pilot's face, he said, and then they saw the plane veering toward the right, as if the pilot was trying to avoid hitting them.
http://tinyurl.com/ljkgj
This is you being funny? While I certainly don't hope for any tragedies in YOUR near future.....
I hope that at least you can be banned for being a complete jackass.
RIP Mr. Lidle
That said, if certain posts remain, I will wait a while before coming back because its one thing to ridicule and complain about performance on the field but this is really life and death and more so, respect and class. And whether or not you liked the Yankees, you respected their class.
That's it and again I hope soon you guys and gals can talk baseball.
Rest in peace, Cory. You will be missed.
===
At 5:40 p.m., an anonymous painful wail pierces the silence of a still-vacant Shea Stadium.
The day before, Preston Wilson had reminisced about cavorting around Shea Stadium as a 12-year-old watching pop Mookie and the rest of the 1986 Mets win the World Series. Preston talked about how welcoming it was to still see many of the same people working in various capacities in the park.
It stood then to reason a lot of current workers were also here in 1997, when Lidle spent his rookie season with the Mets.
That anonymous, painful wail confirmed it.
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http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2622099
JL, thank you for apologizing.
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