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Corey Lidle: When Tragedy Hits Sports

October 20, 2006

by Andrew Flanagan

When I think about a baseball player, immediately a list of statistics comes to mind. For pitchers, I think of his ERA, his strikeouts to walks ratio, or his number of wins and losses. For position players it’s his batting average, his homeruns, or his OPS. Is he right-handed or left handed? Is he an able defensemen or mediocre? Is he able to steal bases or is he a liability when running? The player becomes a unit that can be measured against and exchanged with others.

This is especially apparent when it comes to team transactions. When the trading deadline approaches, every season I look to see what teams might be looking for and what they might be willing to give up.

The players become commodities in a number driven marketplace; one where you look at pitchers’ peripherals like you would kick the tires on a used car. Everyone is out to make a profit and make their team better, and in the process the players become objectified.

This is a part of the game that I enjoy a lot, actually. I relish the arguments I have with my friends trying to predict whether a certain pitcher can make the switch from the National League to the American League or if David Ortiz is more valuable to his respective team than Derek Jeter and vice versa (it’s Ortiz, in case you were wondering).

The idea is almost absurd; predicting how a player will fare based on how many people he struck out the previous year, or comparing two players who are so different by spitting out obscure stat after obscure stat.

But as fans, it is in our nature to sometimes over-analyze and in the end, we like it.

However, sometimes we do forget that there is more to baseball players than their stats, their teams, or their status as athletes at all.

On October 11, we received a shocking reminder of this when a small plane piloted by Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed into a New York City apartment building, killing him and a flight instructor on board with him.

This occurred only four days after his final pitching performance in which the Detroit Tigers eliminated the Yankees from the playoffs.

A flurry of questions followed his death especially because of his celebrity and also because the visual of the plane crashing into the tower looked eerily similar to the 9/11 attacks in New York.

The story was broadcast nationally and for that brief time Cory Lidle transcended baseball and became a human being to all of us.

It was a sad end to a solid, if not spectacular, career as a major league pitcher. Lidle played for nine seasons beginning with the New York Mets in 1997 and then finishing this year up with the Yankees, after being acquired in a mid-season trade with the Philadelphia Phillies that also included Bobby Abreu.

As a baseball player there isn’t that much more to say about him. He was a pitcher who made solid contributions but never really threatened to be more than that. But this description seems quite inadequate now.

It was also a sad end to a young life. Only thirty-four years old, Lidle left behind a wife and a young son, who found out about the tragedy after much of the nation did, as they were on a plane themselves when the accident took place. His parents also found out through coverage on the national news.

He loved flying and had just earned his license in February. He owned the plane involved in the crash, and has been quoted describing his confidence in that plane and his own ability to fly it.

Unfortunately it seems there were odd circumstances surrounding his death. The area in which he was flying can be hazardous since the winds blowing between the tall, city buildings can be hard to predict. Perhaps the conditions may have been too much for an inexperienced pilot to handle. There is still debate as to the exact cause of the accident, and the details are slowly accumulating.

This sad story impacted me as a baseball fan, and forced me to see the game in a different way. Being a Red Sox fan, I saw Lidle as a Yankee. Needless to say, I didn’t like him too much. I particularly didn’t like how he became a Yankee, as the trade that the Phillies made to send him and Bobby Abreu to New York was, in my opinion, outrageously one-sided.

The deal epitomized the power the Yankees have in the league as the one team with a truly unrestricted payroll.

The Sox do more than their share of big spending, but to get a sold pitcher and a big name bat at the trade deadline for mid-level prospects was a feat only a team willing to take on a huge contract could pull off. And to my dismay, the deal played a large part in their success down the stretch as they won the American League East for the umpteenth straight time.

This is the context in which I knew Cory Lidle before October 11. He was a unit in a trade, a piece in the puzzle that is the AL East race, a representation of the ballooning inequity in baseball payrolls.

He was all of these things to me, but not a person, not really. He had a name and a face, but he was still a baseball player, a Yankee, a bunch of stats.

But when he died so suddenly and so shockingly, he became quite real to me. I realized that all the emotions and feelings I had regarding him were all moot.
No longer was I thinking about a baseball player. I was mourning over a father, a husband, a brother, a son.

I could not imagine living in New York and hearing that a Yankees pitcher had died in a plane that crashed into a building. It would have been too much. I honestly felt for any Yankee fan, particularly one living in the city.

While my dislike for Yankees fans are well known, it’s literally impossible to not feel sympathy for them after this horrific tragedy.

Cory Lidle’s story made me remember to keep baseball in context. Sure, I will always hate the Yankees, but I can put that aside when I have to because I realize that there are things that are much bigger than baseball.

I will still pore over the statistics of baseball players and expect them to be superheroes out on the baseball diamond, but also keep in mind that they are mortal, too.

I may not learn the life stories of my favorite players, but I will remember that they are living life just as we are.

Though Cory Lidle’s death was tragic, he has helped show us all that baseball players are more than just strikeouts and pitch counts; they are just like us.
When all the dust has settled, we should step back and see baseball for what it truly is: just a game. Some fans look at baseball as a sort of haven from the trials and tribulations from everyday life but we should realize that not even America’s pasttime can shield us from reality all the time. Rest in peace, Lidle.