Cory Lidle: Pitcher And Pilot

When pitcher Cory Lidle was traded by the Philadelphia Phillies to the New York Yankees this summer, his flying became an issue.

Lidle, who had been with the Phillies since 2004, made some disparaging comments about his former teammates, and one of them brought up the pitcher's love of flying in his retort. "The only thing Cory Lidle wants to do is fly around in his airplane and gamble," relief pitcher Arthur Rhodes told reporters.

Lidle loved to play poker: He hosted a benefit poker tournament in Las Vegas for the last two years, raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. But a New York Times article published a month ago noted that flying was the pitcher's passion.

Lidle began taking flying lessons the day after the 2005 season ended, eventually earning his pilot's license. He told the Times he bought his Cirrus SR20 airplane for $187,000 that same off-season. Lidle and a passenger were killed on Wednesday when that plane hit a high-rise building on the East Side of Manhattan.

Flying his plane would have been a tough sell for Lidle if he had re-signed with the Yankees for the 2007 season. Not only would flying be outside the rules of the team's standard contract, but the Yankees have a sad history with plane crashes. Their All-star catcher and team captain, Thurman Munson, was killed while practicing takeoffs and landings near his Ohio home on Aug. 2, 1979.

Still, Lidle thought his outside-of-baseball activities were safe.

"The whole plane has a parachute on it," Lidle told the Times. "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."

According to the plane manufacturer's Web site, all Cirrus planes are equipped with an airframe parachute that can be used if the engine fails. "The parachute system is designed to protect occupants in the event of an emergency by lowering the aircraft to the ground after deployment," it reads.

Lidle's death comes just days after his team was eliminated from the American League playoffs. He pitched in New York's season-ending loss on October 7, giving up three runs and four hits in 1 1/3 innings as the Yankees lost 8-3 and dropped the AL Divisional Series to the Detroit Tigers in four games.

Overall, Lidle went 4-3 with a 5.16 ERA in 10 games, nine of them starts, for the Yankees after being acquired from Philadelphia.

He was one of the few players reporters saw picking up their belongings on Monday at Yankee Stadium.

"I think we got taken by surprise," he said of the loss to Detroit. "We got matched up with a team that, I think, was a little more ready to play than we were."

He also talked again about his interest in flying, explaining to reporters the process of getting a pilot's license, and said he intended to fly back to his native California in several days. He said it would take roughly 15 hours of flying time, but he planned to make a few stops. Lidle also discussed the plane crash of John F. Kennedy Jr. and how he had read the accident report on the National Transportation Safety Board Web site.

Although he was a useful starter and reliever during his career, Lidle was an outcast among some big-league players because he crossed the picket line when major leaguers were on strike in 1995.

When former teammate Rhodes was bashing him this summer, he called Lidle a "scab" before challenging his commitment to the game.

Lidle pitched in only one spring training game during the strike, but that was enough for baseball's unionized players to mark him forever.

In 2002, the St. Petersburg Times reported that Lidle, when he was pitching for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2000, almost ended up in a fistfight with the rest of the team when they found out he had been a "replacement player."

"I was 23 years old, I didn't know anything," Lidle said in the article. "I had already been released once. I didn't want to get sent home. Now, when I look back, I was naive."

Lidle was first signed as an undrafted free-agent by the Minnesota Twins in 1990, but was released after two seasons. He eventually made it to the big leagues in 1997 with the New York Mets and went on to play in all or parts of nine major league seasons. In all, he pitched in 277 big-league games for seven teams.