NEW YORK _ Forty years ago, on Aug. 2, 1979, an aircraft bearing the numbers NY15 crashed short of the runway at Akron-Canton Airport, about 50 miles south of Cleveland.
The pilot, Yankees captain Thurman Munson, could not be freed before the Cessna twin-engine turbojet burst into flames.
The news of the 32-year-old All-Star catcher's death stunned the baseball world and shattered his teammates.
"When Thurman got killed, you know, we just lost all _ the whole season was just kind of lost," third baseman Graig Nettles said in a 1981 deposition related to the wrongful death suit filed by Munson's widow, Diana.
"I knew that those men would never be the same," Diana Munson said last week from the Canton, Ohio, home that she and Thurman shared, not far from the site of the fiery crash.
Every Yankees fan can recall where they were when the news of Munson's death broke on that early summer evening.
But imagine being a teammate.
"I was in the backyard with my kids and my wife," Lou Piniella, 75, said from Tampa. "We got a call from Mr. (George) Steinbrenner. He was almost hysterical. I don't know what he was talking about initially. Finally, he told me that Thurman had had an accident and died in his airplane."
