When most of us heard that Roy Halladay’s plane went down in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, killing the future Hall of Fame pitcher at 40, we wondered: How could this be happening?
Ted Lilly’s reaction was closer to: How could this be happening again?
Lilly had already lost one friend to a small-plane crash. He and Cory Lidle grew close during their half-season together with the 2002 A’s. Lilly went on to the Blue Jays; Lidle spent time with three teams before a deadline trade sent him to the Yankees in ’06. That year Toronto missed the playoffs and New York was eliminated in the first round.