Breaking News on the East Side

[Valadius]

This just in: Manny Acta lives in the building Lidle crashed into.

[metsmarathon]

cleonjones11 wrote: Couldnt he have flown the Yankee plane?

no.

cleonjones11 wrote: Yankees get the Papers again tomorrow..

so?

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

cj11 - "OK....time's up..

Couldnt he have flown the Yankee plane?

He was always kind of wild

The Yankes attack NY and scramble NORAD...

Yankees get the Papers again tomorrow.."

Pure class.

[Benjamin Grimm]

It's a bit surprising, but you get 15% more hits on the UMDB on the day you get arrested for robbing a jewelry store than on the day you crash your airplane into a Manhattan highrise.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Perhaps it's because Lidle is less closely associated with the Mets than with some of the other teams for which he played.

[Benjamin Grimm]

You could say the same about Jeff Reardon too.

Maybe the Jeff Reardon news broke earlier in the day.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I guess there are more Cory Lidle pages on the web than Jeff Reardon pages, as Lidle was a current player.

[Guest cooby]

Cleon, it's okay to be nice when the situation calls for it

[Guest cooby]

Oh my.


NEW YORK -- For Mets third-base coach Manny Acta, Wednesday was supposed to be like any other day. He left his home at the Belaire Condominiums, a high-rise building on 524 East 72nd Street in Manhattan at 2 p.m. ET. By the time he reached Shea Stadium at close to 4 p.m., he started receiving concerned phone calls from his family.
"Are you all right?" his wife, Cindy, and daughters, Jenny and Leslie, asked Acta.

Acta was OK, but he learned that Yankees right-hander Cory Lidle and a passenger were killed when Lidle's plane crashed into the Belaire Condominiums. Acta was not sure he still had a home to go to on Wednesday night. If not, he would stay at a hotel that the Mets arranged for him.

The ironic part was that Acta was planning to check out of the condominium for good on Thursday and stay at a hotel for the rest of the postseason.

"I didn't know where the crash was," he said. "I turned on the TV [at Shea Stadium] and they started saying that it was on 71st [street], which is a block over, and then finally, they came out and said it was on 72nd Street.

"They still didn't have the exact address until they said it was 524, where I live. I started getting phone calls from my wife and daughters and friends who know where I live. It was pretty shocking."


Acta was saddened to learn that Lidle lost his life in the crash.

"I feel real bad about Cory Lidle, his co-pilot, his family," he said. "I also feel bad for the people inside the building. It's not just about him and me."

[Guest silverdsl]

cleonjones11 wrote: OK....time's up.. Couldnt he have flown the Yankee plane? He was always kind of wild The Yankes attack NY and scramble NORAD... Yankees get the Papers again tomorrow..

It's a shame when someone's fandom seems to get in the way of their respect for someone's life.This plane wreck puts things into perspective for most people that as heated and passionate as rivalries might get, it's only a game. Lidle was a living, breathing human being whose only difference from any other baseball player was that he happened to wear Yankee pinstripes most recently.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Sorry about that, silver. Cleon's our black sheep. He speaks for himself, and not for any of the rest of us.

[Guest silverdsl]

Thanks. I'm a very tolerant person but some things just cross the line for me.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Silver - please don't judge the rest of us by Cleon. You can see at a glance that he doesn't represent us.

[MFS62]

A list of sports-related people who have died in plane crashes was in today's NY Daily News. Until I saw that list, I had never known that legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne died in a plane crash. And he was only 44 when he died.

Later

[Guest silverdsl]

I know that post doesn't reflect the thoughts of everyone else. Even on NYYFans we had to ban a few people since last night who thought it was appropriate to troll, try to stir up trouble and joke about Lidle's death. I'd like to say I'm surprised, but really I'm not. I'm more sad that some have that kind of attitude about this kind of a tragedy.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Give cleon some credit, at least regarding his or her team bias. He/she pretty much dishes nothing but sub-literate crap about the Mets also.

I'm going to disagree that these sort of things put sports into persepctive. I think it helps to blow sports out of perspective. If the pilot was Joe Rudnik, his name would be forfotten by Saturday and this would be out of the news by Sunday.

Even now, it's the morning after. Without checking, how many of us can name the dead flight instructor?

He should have been a utility infielder, then the whole country would know his name this morning.

(None of this is meant with disrespect.)

[metirish]

It's such a horrible thing to make fun of this accident,I really don't care what uniform Lidle wore,the man was a husband and father to a young child.

Rest In Peace.

[Guest cleonjones11]

I guess the entire Yankee season went up in flames

[Benjamin Grimm]

http://www.salagir.com/gfx/troll-web.jpg

[Valadius]

Hey Yancy, are you working on getting a Metly photo for Cory Lidle's profile on the UMDB?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Steve posted that detail from the team photo above.

[Benjamin Grimm]

"Working on it" is a bit of a stretch. I did do a search and came up empty. If anyone can find a good clear headshot of Cory Lidle in a Mets cap, I'll be glad to use it.

I imagine that there's one in the 1997 yearbook. My scanner's not working or I'd dig out my copy and scan the photo. If anyone has the 1997 yearbook and a working scanner, I'd appreciate the assist.

[Valadius]

There's one on the third page of this thread.

[Benjamin Grimm]

The quality on that one is too poor. I'm going to have to pass on it.

[Elster88]

silverdsl wrote: ="cleonjones11"]OK....time's up.. Couldnt he have flown the Yankee plane? He was always kind of wild The Yankes attack NY and scramble NORAD... Yankees get the Papers again tomorrow.. It's a shame when someone's fandom seems to get in the way of their respect for someone's life.This plane wreck puts things into perspective for most people that as heated and passionate as rivalries might get, it's only a game. Lidle was a living, breathing human being whose only difference from any other baseball player was that he happened to wear Yankee pinstripes most recently.

I wouldn't have made the jokes today either....but I'm always wary when someone gets upset over this.

Jokes are made about dead people all the time. This forum, myself included, unmercifully mocks Mariano for the incident in his pool. Guess what? People died there too.

So what makes that different? Or what's different when someone makes up a joke about the fire in Waco, Texas in the ninteies? Or Jeffery Dahmer's eating habits?

Is it just the timespan being so small that cleon is not allowed to make these jokes? Is it okay in a year? Five years? A few days?

Before anyone goes blasting cleon for this, I hope you have decided you will never joke about something related to death again. As in ever. Because otherwise ripping him is just being a hypocrite.

BTW, I don't mean this as a defense for cleon. Like I said I wouldn't have made these jokes either. But I do joke about tragic events, so I'm not going rip him a new one for making these remarks.

[dinosaur jesus]

This is way too close, both in time and, for a lot of people here, distance. There's nothing hypocritical about not finding it funny.

[Elster88]

Agreed. There is nothing hypocritical in not finding it funny.

But what I actually SAID was there is something hypocritical in ripping the guy and then turning around tomorrow and making a joke related to someone else dying. Distance and timing matter not.

[Benjamin Grimm]

And if you die from arguing about it we'll make jokes about you.

[Elster88]

I'm fine with that....but if you ripped cleon the day before then you're a hypocrite.

[smg58]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=schwarz_alan&id=2622245

This was worth reading. Schwarz and Lidle were on good terms, and even discussed flying.