Brian Cole, seen here during the early days of his minor league career, was a rising baseball star.
Cole's brother, Greg, says Brian was on the Mets 40-man roster at the start of spring training.
One day, during the early part of his spring training tryout with the Mets, tragedy struck for the Cole family.
Cole was driving an 2001 Ford Explorer when another driver forced him off the road. His car flipped three times.
Cole was pronounced dead at the scene. Everyone assumed at the time that Brian Cole was thrown from his SUV and killed because he wasn't wearing his seatbelt.
When the family looked in the car, however, they saw that Cole's seatbelt was still latched. So, his family sued. Since the suit, investigators have learned that 22,000 people have died wearing seatbelts during rollovers between 1992 and 2002, many with the same kind of allegedly faulty belts in Cole's car.
Ford still insists Cole wasn't wearing his belt. But, in September the jury returned a $131 million verdict against Ford.
Brian's family said his reputation was tarnished by the assumption he hadn't buckled up. They can't bring him back, but they feel they did clear his name.