Mid-afternoon, I got a message from my brother, saying that a small airplane had crashed into a building on Manhattan's East Side, that they didn't think it was terrorism, that it didn't look like very many people were killed, but that my evening commute might be affected.
Then the emails started coming in on Baseball Prospectus's internal mailing list. The messages said it was Cory Lidle's plane that crashed into that building. Lidle is presumed dead.
That set my head spinning, and my heart somewhat numb. Lidle was a guy who had just joined the team, so he wasn't someone we'd gotten attached to. Lidle was a free agent after the season, and I'd assumed that Lidle's ineffective middle relief stint in Detroit this weekend was the last we'd seen of Cory Lidle in pinstripes. This, particularly after Lidle was the one Yankee to speak ill of Joe Torre when the Joe Must Go! bandwagon was at its fullest.
Lidle had been a player who moved around a lot--he was on his seventh team in a major league career that started with the Mets in 1997--and he hadn't made too many friends at his last stop, in Philadelphia, where he was strongly criticized by Arthur Rhodes after he was traded to the Yankees along with Bobby Abreu. Now, all of that seems so irrelevant.
Our condolences go out to Mr. Lidle's family, as well as the people (and the families of those) who have been injured, killed, or left homeless by this tragedy.
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