Mike Celizic

NEW YORK - On Sunday, Cory Lidle was cleaning out his locker in Yankee Stadium, talking to teammates about flying his single-engine plane back to California and how much fun it would be.

Now he’s dead, his trip to California interrupted by a New York City apartment building not long after Lidle took off from Teterboro Airport in Bergen County, N.J. And the trite thing to say is, "Here we were getting all hot and bothered over whether Joe Torre should continue to manage the Yankees, and whether A-Rod should star in the Bronx or be sold to the highest bidder. This sure puts things into perspective."

The trouble with that statement is that whatever new perspective we gain from a tragedy like this evaporates like morning dew on a hot July morning the instant the game begins. The perspective we said we all gained when the games were canceled for a week after 9-11 lasted a couple of months before we were back to getting worked up over fun and games as if nothing had happened.

That’s good and it’s healthy; it’s the way life is supposed to be. If we ever had true perspective on spectator sports, we wouldn’t bother with them because they are senseless frivolities. But we do bother with them for precisely that reason. They give us an escape, something harmless in which to invest our emotion, something to take our minds off the fragility of life.

When a tragedy like this occurs, it’s a shock because athletes aren’t supposed to die. That’s not part of the deal in the reality show that is spectator sports.

We know death happens elsewhere. It’s all around us, even if it usually takes place in hospitals instead of at home. But the death of a loved one from cancer or a neighbor in a car crash or a coworker in a rock-climbing accident doesn’t impress us the way that of an athlete does.

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Athletes are the healthiest and fittest people among us, David Wells notwithstanding. They can do things physically that most of us can only dream of doing. They pull hammies and blow ACLs and tear rotator cuffs, but they don’t die. We like to talk about how young people in general and athletes in particular think of themselves as immortal, but we think of them that way, too.

So when an athlete dies, it’s like a slap in the face, an unwelcome reminder that even though athletes provide our entertainment, they also inhabit the real world in which bad things happen. The knee-jerk reaction at such moments is to say, "This puts things in perspective."

Rick Peterson is a pitching coach. He works for the Mets now, but once worked for the A’s when Lidle was on that staff. When word hit Shea Stadium that Lidle had died in the plane crash that was leading all the news broadcasts, Peterson was asked to talk to the media about it.

Peterson called Lidle’s death "horrific," adding, "It’s almost unbelievable.

"I think it just goes to show how insignificant some of the things that we think are significant really are. We’re about to play a baseball game, and how important is that really?

"This is not about life and death," he said of the sport to which he has dedicated his life and his talents. "It’s about entertainment."

After saying that, Peterson went back to the Mets clubhouse, where the players were waiting to see if the rain would life enough to get a game in. The game was later postponed, pushed back one day because of the weather.

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