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.