Moneyball

After his outstanding performance, during Oakland’s 20-game winning streak, Cory Lidle expected more pay.  With a price-tag too high for the A’s, he was traded to the Blue Jays, for the 2003 season.

Remaining with Toronto for a year, Lidle then went to the Reds (in 2004), the Phillies (for part of 2004 to the end of July, 2006) and the Yankees (for the rest of their 2006 regular and post seasons).
                       
Cory was learning to fly and had purchased a single-engine aircraft.  He and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger, planned to fly the plane back to California (where they lived with their families) when the Yankee’s baseball season was over.

Shortly after coming to New York, Lidle had an interview with the New York Times.  He told a reporter how safe he felt in his SR-20:

It's got some cool safety features on it.  The whole plane has a parachute on it.  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.  (Cory Lidle, quoted by Harvey Frommer and Paul O'Neill, in A Yankee Century and Beyond, at page 144.)

On the 11th of October, 2006 - after helping their families get on a commercial flight to California - Cory and Ty took off from Teterboro Airport, in New Jersey.  They were excited about their plan to fly over the Statue of Liberty.

Airspace in and around Manhattan is restricted.  Three major airports located in the vicinity - LaGuardia, JFK and Newark - are among the busiest in America.  Cory filed a flight plan to fly over the Statue, then north for a view of the city, then south via a 180-degree turn over the East River.

Something went catastrophically wrong on the flight.  The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later concluded that whoever was piloting Cory's Cirrus SR-20 did not have enough experience to safely make the 180-degree turn.  Investigators could not determine whether Cory or his instructor was flying at the time the plane crashed into a building on New York's East Side.

No parachute on the plane could have saved Ty and Cory since the plane did not crash because of engine failure.  Among the NTSB findings are these:

The airplane impacted the 32nd and the 33rd floors of the north face of an apartment building located at 524 East 72nd Street.  The engine, propeller, the right portion of the engine mount, and the nose landing gear strut were found in an apartment on the 32nd floor.  The engine was found inverted with the propeller separated.  The engine and propeller exhibited thermal damage and were coated with ash, debris, and fire-extinguishing agent.

The majority of the wreckage was on the street level at East 72nd Street, directly below the impact point.  The wreckage was destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire. Some wreckage debris was found on adjacent rooftops, balconies, and building projections. The examination of the wreckage indicated that there was no sign of an in-flight fire or any preexisting damage to the airplane.

After inspecting every airplane crash, the NTSB issues a “probable cause” report.  They concluded Cory’s plane crashed due to pilot error:

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilots’ inadequate planning, judgment, and airmanship in the performance of a 180° turn maneuver inside of a limited turning space.

In May of 2011, following a jury trial in which both widows claimed that the plane was defectively designed, the jury agreed with the NTSB probable-cause report.

Meanwhile ... where are Cory’s teammates (with whom he shared some of the highlights of his professional career)?