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Cory Lidle's favorite word should have been aloha,
which means both hello and goodbye. Here's his 1998 rookie card,
fittingly showing him in the uniform of a team that sent him packing
before he ever played a single game for them. He'd made his major
league debut the year before for the New York Mets, then was the
thirteenth pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 1997 expansion
draft. This was already the fifth major league transaction involving
Lidle, who would be tossed around by fourteen such transactions in all
before crashing his single engine airplane into a New York City
skyscraper. The Diamondbacks, who had gotten him from the Mets who had
gotten him from the Brewers who had gotten him from the Twins, passed
him on to the Devil Rays who passed him on to the A's who passed him on
to the Blue Jays who passed him on to the Reds who passed him on to the
Phillies who passed him on to the Yankees. He was never in one place
for longer than two years, and twice in his last three years he was
traded in mid-season. Early in his final year, even before the last of
the transactions, Lidle had spoken of his new hobby in glowing, almost
spiritual terms, as if he'd discovered the salvation of the journeyman.
"No matter what's going on in your life," he said, "when you get up in
that plane, everything's gone."
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