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推 NcThoR:我的飛機比底下的汽車更安全。Schwarz回憶這個恐怖的對話.. 10/15 17:05
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2623122
By John Helyar
ESPN.com
Had he played a different game, Cory Lidle might not have been in the plane
that crashed into a high-rise in New York City on Wednesday. In some
professional sports, athletes are barred from being pilots. The NBA's uniform
player contract, for example, expressly forbids "operating an aircraft."
假如他是在另一場比賽中出賽，也許就不會發生這樣的意外。某些職業運動如NBA是
禁止球員駕駛飛機的。
But in other sports, by contrast, athletes routinely double as pilots. Tony
Stewart, Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle all fly themselves around the Nextel Cup
circuit.
其他的運動裡，運動員時常兼任飛行員。
In either event, the very qualities that drive a player to the elite levels of
sports can also drive him into the skies: a huge appetite for adventure and a
huge dollop of self-confidence.
對冒險的追求以及自信驅使他們參與飛行。
Although Lidle's death might give fellow athlete flyboys pause, sports
psychologist Jack Llewellyn doubts it will ground them. It isn't in the nature
of the beast.
這次悲劇會讓其他運動飛行員有所警惕，但是無法阻止他們。
"Athletes are aggressive," he says. "They're risk-takers, and they have a real
feeling of invincibility. That's what separates them from other people, and you
can't take that away."
「運動員有積極的特質，喜歡刺激冒險。這也是之所以他們和其他人不同。」
Lidle's last contract with the Philadelphia Phillies, which expired at the end
of the regular season, was designed to discourage his passion for aviation. It
included a provision terminating the club's payment obligations on the two-year
, $6.5 million deal if he was hurt "piloting or learning to operate or serving
as the member of a crew of any aircraft." While just one in a long list of
contract-voiding stipulations that are standard on the Phillies' guaranteed
contracts, club spokeswoman Leigh Tobin says, "They made him very aware of
that."
Lidle與費城人的合約本季結束，之前是計畫以減少他飛行的慾望。其中包含禁止他擔任
飛行員的條件(否則可不付薪水)。
If it is ultimately found that Lidle was piloting the plane in the crash that
killed him (investigators are still trying to determine who was at the controls
), a clause in the baseball union's benefit plan might keep his beneficiaries
from collecting on a $1.5 million payout. An exclusion in the plan eliminates a
life insurance benefit and an accidental death benefit for "any incident
related to travel in an aircraft while acting in any capacity other than as a
passenger."
如果最後調查出是Lidle駕駛，那受益者就無法獲得150萬的支付金。
Still, Lidle was so taken with flying and so sure of his skills that when
writer and friend Alan Schwarz declined an invitation to join him for a flight
over the East River, the pitcher mocked his evident fear of small planes.
Lidle還是很喜愛飛行，當他邀請作家朋友一起時被拒絕，而對他的恐懼開玩笑。
"The kind of plane I have will be safer than the cars on the FDR Drive below us
," he told Schwarz, who recalled the eerie conversation for ESPN.com.
「我的飛機比底下的汽車更安全。」Schwarz回憶這個恐怖的對話。
Lidle's enthusiasm and confidence were understandable. Aviation expert Michael
Maya Charles says athletes often have both an affinity and aptitude for flying,
because, like the games they play, it's a challenge requiring both physical and
mental skills -- and it's a whole new vista to conquer.
But Lidle might also have been typical of people who are accomplished in one
profession, then enter and embrace aviation, according to Charles, a commercial
pilot, flight instructor and author of the book "Artful Flying."
"These are super-ego people," he says. "They know they have done very well in a
field, and they take that to the next thing they attempt. They expect immediate
expertise, and they don't necessarily have it.
Small, sleek planes such as the Cirrus SR20 that Lidle was flying on Wednesday
have higher crash risks than bigger planes, according to aviation-safety expert
Michael Boyd -- not because there's anything wrong with the aircraft, but
because the smaller planes primarily are flown by less experienced pilots like
Lidle.
"It's a hobbyist airplane, so you can expect higher accident rates," the
Evergreen, Colo., consultant said.
In a sense, there's nothing new in Lidle's tragic end, beyond its spectacular
and horrific nature. Athletes have risked their careers on many avocations
besides aviation. In August, Ben Roethlisberger's love of motorcycles landed
the Steelers' quarterback on a street and in a hospital in Pittsburgh. And
athletes have lost their lives in many other "what on earth was he thinking"
ways. In January of 2000, for example, the NBA's Bobby Phills died during a
drag race with his Charlotte Hornets teammate
David Wesley.
Indeed, it isn't as if Lidle was part of a huge new trend toward professional
team-sport athletes becoming pilots. It's still a short list, though it
includes some notables such as the New England Patriots' Tom Brady and the
Montreal Canadiens' Alexei Kovalev. The uniform players contract in MLB, per
the collective bargaining agreement, sticks to a pretty traditional list of off
-limits activities: skiing, skin diving, football, soccer, ice hockey, auto
racing, motorcycle racing, and professional boxing, wrestling and basketball.
But Lidle symbolizes something that is different for today's athletes,
according to Llewellyn.
"Money has enabled them to take more risks; it's enabled them to do things they
couldn't before," he says. "They can go out and buy a jet for $5 million."
Get beyond the team games, moreover, and pilot-athletes are more the norm in
some sports. NASCAR's Biffle flies a helicopter to make quick getaways from a
race, and then flies a plane to the next track. This has the twin virtues of
being efficient and peaceful, he told Private Air magazine: "It kind of takes
your mind off everything, and it's fun to do."
Hopping from stock car to cockpit seems a natural extension of the Nextel Cup
skill set -- yet still hazardous. Driver Davey Allison died in 1993 after a
helicopter he was piloting crashed on the infield at Talladega Superspeedway.
Jack Rousch, a team owner, barely survived a crash in 2002, when a plane he was
flying went down.
The difference is that NASCAR drivers and another significant category of pilot
-athletes -- PGA Tour golfers -- become far more accomplished flyers than
hobbyists such as Lidle, after they've hopscotched around the country for years
. Bobby Clampett has logged 4,000 hours in the air over 19 years as a player
and now TV commentator.
"I look on it as another profession," he says. "I feel extremely safe."
John Helyar is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. He
previously covered the business of sports for The Wall Street Journal and
Fortune magazine and is the author of "Lords of the Realm: The Real History of
Baseball."
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