New York Baseball

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Roy Halladay Dies in Plane Crash in Gulf of Mexico
By BENJAMIN HOFFMANNOV. 7, 2017

Roy Halladay, a retired pitcher who starred for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies, died on Tuesday when his plane crashed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. He was 40.

The crash was reported to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office by a resident at 12:06 p.m., and when law enforcement arrived on the scene, the plane, an ICON A5 registered to Halladay, was upside down in shallow water.

After four hours of search and recovery, Sheriff Chris Nocco reported that Halladay had been the only person on the plane and said the specifics of the crash were still under investigation.

Nocco referred most questions involving the crash to the National Transportation Safety Board, which will take over the investigation, but he said there had been no mayday call received by air traffic control in nearby Tampa before the crash.

The manufacturer of the plane issued a statement on Tuesday expressing condolences to Halladay’s family and friends. “ICON will do everything it can to support the accident investigation going forward,” the statement said, “and we will comment further when more information is available.”


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The news of Halladay’s death was quickly followed by expressions of grief on social media.

“We are numb over the very tragic news about Roy Halladay’s untimely death,” the Phillies said in a statement posted to Twitter. “There are no words to describe the sadness that the entire Phillies family is feeling over the loss of one of the most respected human beings to ever play the game.”

A two-time Cy Young Award winner and an eight-time All-Star, Halladay was a 6-foot-6 right-hander known for his durability and command.

After 12 major league seasons with the Blue Jays, who drafted him in 1995, he was traded to the Phillies in December 2009. Halladay made 2010 a definitive year in his career. He threw the 20th perfect game in major league history during the regular season, and in a division playoff series against Cincinnati, he threw the second no-hitter in postseason history.

After the postseason no-hitter, Dusty Baker, the Reds’ manager at the time and a fixture in the sport going back to the late 1960s, said, “That is the best-pitched game I’ve seen since I’ve been going to the playoffs and the World Series.”

One of the strongest messages of condolence on social media came from Pedro Martinez, the three-time Cy Young Award winner whose prime coincided with Halladay’s.

Pedro Martinez ?@45PedroMartinez
I can’t believe it. So many times we competed against each other and even while competing, I wanted to see you! My condolences to his family

We are saddened by the tragic news that Roy Halladay, 2-time Cy Young Award winner & 8-time All-Star, has died in a plane crash. He was 40. pic.twitter.com/SOFv3bOLyt

— MLB (@MLB) November 7, 2017

…
5:02 PM - Nov 7, 2017

Halladay’s career was cut short by back trouble, however. He became a much weaker pitcher in the 2012 and 2013 seasons, and he retired at 36, signing a one-day contract with Toronto to leave the game as a Blue Jay.

Based on his retirement date, Halladay will not be considered for election to baseball’s Hall of Fame until 2019, but he will have a strong case because of his dominance in his strongest seasons. His career record of 203-105 and his 2,117 career strikeouts are not eye-popping numbers, but using the JAWS system, an evaluation tool that accounts for a player’s peak seasons as well as his overall career, Halladay is ranked as baseball’s 42nd-best starting pitcher. Only nine players ahead of him are not yet in the Hall of Fame, while more than 30 pitchers below him on the list are already enshrined in Cooperstown. His postseason success and his popularity with the news media also bolster his case.

Shortly after he retired, Halladay discussed how odd it felt not to play baseball.

“I find myself kind of sitting around the house thinking, ‘There’s something missing here — I should be working out, I should be running, I should be doing something,’” Halladay said. “For a second, it’s kind of a little bit of panic, and then it kind of sets in: ‘O.K., that’s right. I’m retiring now.’ It’s actually a very peaceful feeling.”

He eventually turned to flying as an outlet, and in October he posted pictures of the plane he had recently purchased.


Roy Halladay ?@RoyHalladay
I have dreamed about owning a A5 since I retired! Real life is better then my dreams!! Thx Kirk & everyone @ICONAircraft
3:36 PM - Oct 13, 2017
213 213 Replies 1,071 1,071 Retweets 1,929 1,929 likes
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Halladay, whose father was a pilot, knew the risks that flying presented. He joked about his wife’s opposition to his purchasing the plane in a video that had been posted to YouTube by ICON but that was removed shortly after the crash.

“She’s fought me the whole way,” Halladay said of his wife, Brandy.

“Hard,” Brandy Halladay said in the video. “I fought hard, I was very against it.” She conceded after flying in the plane, though, that she understood the appeal.

Piloting small planes has long been popular among athletes, and Major League Baseball has lost other athletes to similar crashes. Thurman Munson, an All-Star catcher and the 10th captain of the Yankees, died after crashing a Cessna Citation in 1979. And Cory Lidle, a former teammate of Halladay’s on the 2003 Blue Jays, died in 2006 when a Cirrus SR20 he was flying with a co-pilot crashed into an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The fact that the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office led Tuesday’s recovery effort carried extra emotion because of Halladay’s personal relationship with the department, which included the donation of a police dog that the department named Doc, in reference to Halladay’s nickname.

“You wouldn’t know what Roy did because Roy wouldn’t tell you what he did,” Nocco said. “And that’s the legacy of a great man.”

Halladay is survived by his wife and two sons, Ryan and Braden.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/sports/roy-halladay-dead-plane.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fsports&action=click&contentCollection=sports®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0