Every now and then, as we get wrapped up in the minutiae of everyday life and all of the things we consider important, we get slapped upside the head with a healthy dose of reality. WIth the Major League Baseball playoffs in full swing, baseball fans are focused on who’s going to make it to the World Series. Last week, New York Yankees fans were mourning the demise of their team- a $200 million payroll that couldn’t make it out of the first round against a team that backed into a wild-card berth.
Tonight, a woman and her six-year-old son are morning the death of Cory Lidle, a pitcher for the Yankees who was killed when he accidentally flew his plane into an apartment building in Manhattan. Tonight, a wife and son are mourning the loss of a husband and father. Baseball, even Yankees baseball, seem pretty insignificant tonight. Basebal is, after all, just a game. We think of athletes as being somehow above the risks of everyday life, but in reality they are every bit as fragile and vulnerable as anyone else. There is no armor that protects them or exemption they enjoy from sudden death. The Grim Reaper doesn’t care whether or not you can get a curveball past Jim Thome.
There’s nothing special about Cory Lidle’s death. People die every day, and they leave loved ones behind to sort out what remains behind. Life goes on, if only because it has to…same as it ever was. For those of us who hate the Yankees, we should, and I think most of us will, put that hatred into the persective it deserves. Basball is, after all, a kid’s game. It has nothing to do with real life except for the joy and the diversion it provides us. Cory LIdle was part of that diversion, and we should remember him for that. The games will go on; they always do, but as we watch them, perhaps we could pause and remember that the people in the uniforms are flesh and blood, just like you and me. It seems we manage to forget that every now and then.
