PAGE 14 THE BEHREND BEACON OCTOBER 29 1999 NATIONAL SPORTS So much joy, so much sorrow; these Yankees deserved their success by Steve Kelley Knight-Ridder Newspapers October 28, 1999 NEW YORK - In the first moments of their third world championship in four years, the New York Yankees gathered at the pitcher's mound and wrapped their arms around their dev astated right fielder, Paul O'Neill. Early Wednesday morning, O'Neill's father, Charles, died of heart disease. Somehow, for nine innings that night, O'Neill blocked out the pain and played a game on the grandest stage baseball offers. "I don't know if I could have done that," winning pitcher Roger Clemens said after his team's 4-1 World Series clincher over Atlanta. "I mean, he was out there facing 90- and 95-mile-an-hour fastballs with all he was going through. He was hurting." In the pitching-mound mob, O'Neill buried his sorrow on the shoulders of Manager Joe Torre and teammates from Jim Leyritz to Derek Jeter and Chad Curtis. A co coon of caring. They tried to shield O'Neill from the prying eyes of the television minicams. Finally O'Neill ran off the field, the batting glove on his right hand cov ering his face, but not able to hide the tears that flowed freely. "You don't know what a guy's go ing through in a situation like that," Curtis said. "He came out here to night and was just trying to get through the night. I'm just glad we could win it tonight and get it over with, because he needs to deal with that. That's bigger than baseball." So much joy and so much sorrow has been visited on this team this Stewart among victims when out-of-control j by Cornelia Grumman and Rogers Worthington Chicago Tribune October 25, 1999 MINA, S.D. -- A Learjet carrying pro golfer Payne Stewart and at least four others, all somehow incapaci tated, rambled on autopilot across Midwestern skies for four hours Mon day before running out of fuel and crashing in a bog in a farmer's field in South Dakota. Whether Stewart, the two pilots and the other passengers, among them Stewart's agents Robert Fraley, 46, and Van Ardan, 45, were killed on impact or already dead when the plane began its descent may not he known for some time, aviation authorities in dicated. The twin-engine jet took off from Orlando, Fla., Monday morning hound for Dallas. Stewart, 42, known for wearing knickers and a tam-o'- shanter hat on the links, was to attend practice rounds in Houston Tuesday in advance of the PGA's final tourna ment of the year, the Tour Champi- onship. At the controls were veteran pilots Michael Kling, 43, of Orlando, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with 4,000 hours of experience, and Stephanie Bellegarrigue, 27, of Or lando, a commercial pilot with 1,700 hours of flight time. About 25 min utes into the flight they communicated with ground controllers at Gainesville, Fla., then went silent, despite repeated attempts to contact them by radio. Authorities speculated the plane may have suffered a decompression accident that, at high altitude, would have killed everyone on board in such a short period of time the pilots would have had no chance to react or broad cast a mayday emergency signal. The jet reached heights of 45,000 feet during its flight, not an unusual altitude for the Learjet 35, and was most likely carried northward by its autopilot. An Air Force fighter jet on a rou tine training flight from Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., was diverted to check out the jet, an Air Force spokes man said, after ground controllers were unable to communicate with the plane. Two other fighters were scrambled from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. to follow the Learjet. Two Air National Guard planes from Oklahoma later Third baseman Scott Brosius' fa ther died of cancer during the sea son. Last week, reserve infielder Luis Sojo lost his father to a heart atttack. After they left the field, the three Yankees gathered in the off-limits players lounge and cried. All of the feelings that had been locked in some emotional closet were unleashed in a flood of anguish and release. "We have three guys in this club house right now who have that per spective," Curtis said. "They've all had to deal with the deaths of their fathers. If you were able to look at those three guys right now, you'd see they were pretty reflective." There may not be a more digni fied team in sports than these New York Yankees. It isn't merely the team of decade, as this World Series sweep of the At lanta Braves proves inarguably, but this is a collection of human beings you wish you knew. It is a team with perspective. A team that understands its good fortune. A team as grounded as a guru. "We're very businesslike," Torre said. "We take nothing for granted. And we keep grinding." The Yankees understand adversity. They know what cancer is. They know what an aneurysm is. They know how death feels. They under stand how to overcome. They have won 12 straight World Series games. They were I I -1 in this postseason. "The adversity started, really, in '96 when David Cone had that aneu rysm," Torre said. "It shocked every body. stunned everybody. We could either worry about it, or play the sea son. "1 think we've gotten into a real picked up the pursuit. Four hours after it had taken otT and hundreds of miles north of its intended destination, the plane ran out of fuel and ''fell from the sky like a rag," ac cording to witnesses near Mina, S.D., in the north central part of the state. "The plane pretty much nosed straight into the ground," said Lesley Braun, who lives about two miles from the site. "There's not a lot of debris spread out a long ways." TV crews broadcast images of steaming wreckage strewn around a wet farm field. Only shards of debris could he seen from a site set up for the news media 50 yards away. Mike Hammrich of the nearby Ipswich Volunteer Fire Department said he arrived shortly after impact and saw only smoke and small flames. "There is a hole out there probably 15 to 20 feet wide and 8 feet deep," he said. "It's all in a hole. There was nothing there." He said he and dozens of other emergency personnel from surround ing towns walked around the pasture looking for debris. The searchers found some human remains, but noth ing identifiable, he added. National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jim Hall said the agency dispatched a team to the site to begin an investigation. The NTSB released a brief statement about the incident. The plane was operated by Sun Jet Aviation of Sanford, Fla., built in 1976 and carried the serial number 60, the NTSB said. It was flown from Sanford to Orlando Monday morning, where it picked up its passengers. Stewart was a time-share customer at the company that owned the plane. The NTSB said the plane was be lieved to have carried two pilots and four passengers. There was some con fusion about the fourth passenger. Authorities were unable to reach next of kin to check for identification. The plane left Orlando at 8:19 a.m. CDT for Dallas Love Field, a two hour flight. It carried enough fuel to fly for four hours and 45 minutes. Air Traffic Control lost contact with the plane at 8:44 a.m., when it climbed through 37,000 feet on its way to an approved 39,000 foot altitude, the NTSB said. Shortly after that, according to an FAA spokesman in Washington, air traffic controllers noted wide varia tions in the plane's altitude. Air traf- good habit of dealing with whatever lowlights there are. You know the TMS PHOTO New York Yankees Mariano Rivera, Joe Girardi and Scott Brosius celebrate the Yankees' World Series victory as they swept the Atlanta Braves, beating them 4-1 in Game 4 Wednesday night. tragedies and go out there and do the job that we're capable of doing in spite of the odds against us." Torre missed the first 35 games of this season after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Last year, Darryl Strawberry was diagnosed with colon cancer. Then he relapsed and became drug depen dent. He missed most of the season. Players worried about both of them. They worried about the health of the fathers of Brosius and Sojo and O'Neill.They worried and they won. "Tragedy is a part of life," Torre saod. "Just because you're an athlete doesn't mean you're exempt. This is just unusual to have all of these things happen at one time to one fic controllers in Jacksonville, Atlanta and Memphis tried without success to contact the plane. At 9 a.m., an emer gency was declared by air traffic con trol in Memphis. The Air Force planes were scrambled at 9:08 a.m. As it climbed to 45,000 feet, the Learjet was intercepted by the mili tary aircraft that followed it until it crashed. At times, the plane was fly ing so slowly that the military jets had to circle it to keep it under observa tion. They were never able to get close enough to see inside the plane, but reported ice on the inside of the win dows. The strange and troubling journey and crash of N47BA, the serial num ber assigned by the Federal Aviation Administration to the Learjet, led to speculation about what might have happened, particularly after its mili tary pursuers said the jets windows were covered by ice. Some aviation authorities noted that the windows of a plane that had de compression at high altitudes would be icy. Decompression accidents on pri vate jets are rare, and even in com mercial planes are considered unusual events. Most of the experience in deal ing with the problem comes from military planes and pilots, where de compression is more common. Planes must pressurize their cabins and cockpits whenever they fly above 12,000 feet because the environment becomes cold and hostile as the craft gains altitude. At 40,000 feet, the air is too thin to breathe and the tempera ture is 50 degrees below zero. Jets generally send warmed, pres surized air from their engines into the cabin and cockpit areas to keep the atmosphere inside the plane the same as though the craft were flying at about 8,000 feet, which is still safe and comfortable for passengers and pilots. A series of outlet and intake valves is manipulated to keep the pressures at the right level. Pressurization and depressurization is what makes an air traveler's ears pop. Heavy rubber seals around win dows and door openings keep the pressure inside the plane from escap ing. But if a seal ruptures at high alti tude, or if a door seal bursts open, the atmosphere rushes rapidly from the plane, taking oxygen with it. In Washington, federal aviation au thorities and pilots pointed to a blown Yes, this team is good; as good as the Yankee teams of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; as good as the teams of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle; as good as the teams of Reggie Jackson and Ron Guidry.But it is more likable than any other Yankee team from any other de cade. Everybody plays a role on this team. Every player has his moments. The Yan kees share the wealth. "They have ability, and they know what to do with it," Torre said. "No question this baliclub is very close." Last night, Clemens pitched 7 in nings of four-hit, one run ball. "I finally know what it feels like to he a Yankee," he said. How good are the Yankees? Clemens has five Cy Young Awards and was voted to the All-Century Team, but in New York he is a No. 4 starter. "Even my brother Frank ques tioned my sanity when I took the job," Torre said. "It was because I would have to face the abuse or whatever the hell you're supposed to face when you manage in New York." But I knew one thing: It was an opportunity to get to the World Series, which I had never been to." No manager in baseball, no team in professional sports, is more de serving of such abundant success. door or window seal as a potential culprit in Monday's incident, because the pilots did not even have the time to broadcast a mayday, the interna tional distress signal, before the plane, now apparently under its own com puterized controls, headed northward. "If you are in the cabin of a Learjet, you are in a very small pressure ves sel, quite different than a DC-10, 757 or a large passenger jet," said John Nance, a veteran airline captain and aviation analyst. "Almost certainly something blew out. It could have been a window, a door seal or a duct seal. Whatever it was, it doesn't take much to empty the cabin of oxygen of a Lear because it's a very small cabin." Learjets of the type that crashed Monday are equipped with oxygen systems that automatically release breathing masks for passengers. Pi lots have masks attached to a sepa rate oxygen system that they must strap on. Warning lights on the cock pit dashboard inform pilots whenever there is a drop in pressurization. But at high altitudes, pilots and pas sengers are subjected to a "time of useful consciousness" whenever de pressurization occurs. That is the amount of time a body can function without oxygen. The time diminishes sharply with altitude. At 20,000 feet, it is 10 min utes. At 26,000 feet, it drops to two minutes. At 30,000 feet, it drops to 30 seconds. At 40,000 feet, it drops to 15 seconds. "If there was a major depressuriza tion, the pressure would go down in stantly," said Jim Brennan, a former Navy fighter pilot and retired Boeing 747 captain. "Unless you had an oxy gen mask handy, you couldn't do much about it." Dr. Michael Silver, a pulmonary specialist at Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center, said uncon sciousness would come in seconds at high altitudes, and death shortly there after. "The heart and the brain literally stop functioning from lack of oxygen, just like they would in a cardiac ar rest," he said. In Austin, Texas, Mike Flack, an attorney who has filed lawsuits in depressurization incidents, said it is generally impossible to determine what happened inside the airplane af ter a crash until toxicology studies reveal what blood gases were present in the crash victims at the time of Young likely to miss rest of season by Clark Judge Knight-Ridder Newspapers October 27, 1999 SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The agent for Steve Young said Tuesday that the injured 49ers quarterback probably won't play again this season but will not announce his retirement when he holds a news conference Wednesday. Speaking on KCBS radio, Leigh Steinberg said that Young -- who has not played since suffering a concussion on Sept. 27 -- is "probably going to end up on injured reserve," a designa tion that would disqualify him for the remainder of the season. "This is a football injury," Steinberg told the radio station. "He was hurt on the field, and (injured reserve) is where those players go. "But the news is not real encourag ing. It's not cheery. Obviously, to show symptoms this many weeks later is not a real positive sign. ... Nothing is go ing to happen in the way of retirement this season. He will come to the right decision, but this will take a little while." Young, who attended the 49ers' prac tice Tuesday, was not available for comment. He is expected to meet with the media today to give his first public remarks on his future in two weeks. "I think Steve will more clearly de fine exactly what he's thinking right now," Coach Steve Mariucci said. "1 think he will be able to clear some things up; he a little more definitive." Mariucci did not say if the team would put Young on injured reserve but indicated there would he no announce nient today. "Is anything drastic going to hap pen?" he said. "No." If the team were to put Young on the inactive list, it would open a roster spot and guarantee that Young -- who would remain with the 49ers to advise et dives Rescue personnel walk through the scene of the Lear 35 plane crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart and four others Monday near Mina, South Dakota. Debris from the plane is in the foreground. Payne Stewart smiles after receiving the U.S. Open trophy June 20, 1999, after winning with a spectacular 20-foot putt. Stewart was killed in a plane crash with four others October 25. That will give investigators the evi dence they need to determine whether decompression was the likely cause, or whether there was some other cul prit; carbon monoxide, for example, from an onboard fire, or another toxic gas that caused everyone to lose con sciousness. The Learjet in Monday's crash had more than 10,000 flight hours, accord ing to Bombardier Inc., Learjet's par ent company. It had 7,500 takeoffs and landings. Some 670 Learjet Model 35s were manufactured be tween 1974 and 1993. The incident that claimed Stewart's life was similar to an accident nearly 20 years ago that killed Louisiana its quarterbacks, particularly starter Jeff Garcia -- his $3.75 million salary. Young, who is signed through 2003, restructured his contract in February - - gaining $3 million in a signing bo nus and $3.75 million in salary. The salary is not guaranteed. Young, who has suffered four known concussions over the past three sea sons, has sought several medical opin ions since leaving the field late in the second quarter of a 24-10 win over Arizona. He first consulted Dr. Gary Steinberg, chief of neurosurgery at the Stanford Medical School, and received a report that, in Young's words, was "discouraging." At the club's suggestion, Young vis ited other specialists -- with reports that he saw three in Utah last week -- and might not he finished. Mariucci said Young plans to consult at least one or two more specialists this week. "Everyone involved is going to weigh the pros and cons," said Mariucci, who indicated he might hesi tate to play Young even if he were cleared. Two weeks ago, Dr. Steinberg -- no relation to Young's agent -- said the quarterback's condition was improv ing. He also said tests revealed Young suffered no bruises to his brain and de scribed his latest concussion as "mild." He did not, however, clear Young to play. It is unknown what ensuing exami nations revealed, but Young's persis tence in seeking medical advice seems to indicate that they are not positive. It is unclear when Young -- or the team -- will make a decision on his avail ability for the rest of the season. "I don't know if it's in his best inter ests or the team's best interest to drag it out week after week," Mariucci said Monday. "We need to give it ample time and considerable thought. And he's getting there as far as having thingscleared up in his mind." into prairie State University football coach Bo Rein. Rein, who had not yet coached his first game for LSU, left Shreveport, La. on Jan. 10, 1980, in a private plane en route to Baton Rouge after a re cruiting trip. After passing through a thunderstorm, the plane, with a pri vate pilot on board, lost radio contact and flew off course for hundreds of miles before it crashed into the Atlan tic Ocean off Virginia. Investigators never recovered the bodies and were never able to deter mine what happened, but speculated that the plane, which reached 41,000 feet in altitude as it was chased by military planes, somehow lost cabin pressure.
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