9/11 - Corey Lidle - Thurman Munson and the Media

As usual, I'm sitting at home working, minding my own business, when news reports come in that a small aircraft or helicopter , has hit a building on the East side of Manhattan. This brings up memories of 9/11 since that's pretty much how that morning started.

I heard of the first plane hitting a building in NY and even at that time my co-workers and I are visualising a small single engine aircraft flying off course and clipping a building. We were questioning what in the heck even a small aircraft was doing in the area, but chalked it up to pilot error or falling asleep at the wheel or something. That's when word that a second aircraft hit and we all knew that something serious was happening. And life would never be the same again.

Well, even though this sounded innocent enough, the same ??'s seemed to race in my mind and naturally I thought "Oh No, not again?". Seeing the TV images were somewhat helpful in determining that this would likely not be the same type of event. Thank God.

Then word comes that the plane is likely piloted by Yankee Cory Lidle and my thoughts immediately turned to 1979 and the day I heard Thurman Munson had died piloting his own plane. Another event that gave me a feeling that I had been kicked in the gut or sucker punched when I first heard about it.

So in one afternoon, I emotionally drift though stories with eerie parallels to two of the toughest emotionally draining events in my life. The Munson death was brutal because I was twenty years old and had just seen Thurman win a game for the Yankees seemingly the night before and now apparently he was gone, just like that in a tragic accident.

I'm not sure that Lidle holds the same stature that Munson did, certainly not with the Yankees. I'm not even sure that matters. But there must be a similar effect on baseball fans all over. Especially the younger ones, this may be their Thurman Munson, I don't know. Just a tragedy.

And then while staying glued to the radio for updates, the station shifts from the Dan Patrick show to a trio of local hacks hosting their afternoon show. One a hack journalist, another a hack comedian and the other a hack ex-football player. Now, I understand the story having varying effect on different people. And I understand people deal with grief differently. But these assholes didn't grieve, they didn't show any respect for any aspect of the story. To them this was some ego-driven jock who thought he could fly his own plane, but who cares because it was New York and those people are assholes anyway and it was an affluent neighborhood.

Literally within an hour of the body being identified, with speculation that the next of kin had not even been notified, these assholes proceeded into tasteless, classless, boorish Corey Lidle jokes and further elaborated that any comparison to Thuman Munson was stupid, irrelevant , ridiculous and a waste of time since a) Munson was just another Yankee, so who cares and b) Munson was drunk when he crashed his plane.

Now aside from the obvious lack of class and civility, the part about Munson being drunk was certainly factually incorrect. So I penned the idiots a letter:

Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 17:34:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Charles Slavik"
Subject: Laughing at the Death of Corey Lidle
To: macjurkoharry@espnradio1000.com

You worthless pieces of shit!!!

Telling Corey Lidle jokes almost before the next of
kin were informed. You jack-offs must be so proud.

And since you act like the bunch of sanctimonious know
it alls you so clearly are not, advise whoever the
asshole was who stated that Thurman Munson was drunk
when he crashed his plane that he doesn't have a clue
what he's talking about. I'm sure that won't stop you
from spewing your special brand of humor in the
future. I believe you have the Munson incident
confused with the Steve Crews/ Indians tragedy of
years ago. Don't let the facts get in the way of a
good joke.

I'm sure you'll take great pains to correct
yourselves.
While you're doing that, do something else to yourself
that is seemingly anatomically impossible.

It's probably the only way scumbags like you ever get
laid anyway.

What a bunch of reckless, heartless bunch of assholes.
All of you. Make the world a better place and get in a
vehicle together and wrap it around a tree. Better
yet, don't harm the tree, drive off a f**king cliff
and burn to death, then you'll experience the feeling
you so easily want to joke about.

Whenever athletes complain about the media, assholes
like you will be the poster boys. Don't ever complain
when scumbags like you don't get any respect. You are
due none. From anyone who considers themselves a
member of the human race.

ROT IN HELL SCUMBAGS.

Charles Slavik

Of course, don't expect these cretins to be able to read much less understand what I was talking about, but these guys bordered on slanderous talk.

AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY I HATE THE MEDIA.

What's rich about the story is the very first call these animals get this afternoon the caller chastises them for their insensitivity regarding their comments the previous day about the Lidle incident. They quickly usher him off and say and I quote, "He told our screener he wanted to talk about something else" meaning if they knew he wanted to broach the Lidle subject he would not have had s snowballs chance in hell of getting on the air. (Remember the lesson about censorship and talk shows and agenda and such).

Beautiful, they later let on that each was called on the carpet for the prior days comments. They should have never made it back on the air. But then that would be censorship wouldn't it?

Anyway RIP Cory Lidle. Drop dead and rot in hell media scumbags. Never Forget.