Lidle twins shared bond

LAKELAND, Fla. – The last time Kevin Lidle saw his brother Cory was Saturday on television as the New York Yankees reliever pitched in Game 4 of the American League division series against Detroit.

“I live and die with every pitch he throws as if I were pitching myself,” Kevin Lidle said. “If he was in a tight situation I’d be sweating.”

Kevin didn’t see his brother the next time he was on TV. He found out about his twin brother’s death – which happened when the plane his brother owned crashed into a New York City apartment building Wednesday – from a friend who saw the news reports.

“All I really heard was, ‘That was Cory’s plane, that was Cory’s plane!’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Lidle told WTSP.

The brothers shared the bond of baseball. Kevin, the youngest by 8 minutes, is a former minor league pitcher and catcher. Cory pitched for the Yankees – who lost that fourth game and a chance to move on to the World Series – and a handful of other major league teams.

But the connection went much deeper than baseball.

“Me and Cory are pretty much the same person,” Kevin Lidle said. “We talk alike, we laugh alike, we throw alike, we run alike, we did everything.”

Except when it came to flying. Cory Lidle had earned his pilot’s license less than a year ago.

“It was weird to me,” Kevin Lidle said. “I’d talked to him one day and he said, ‘I’m going to get my pilot’s license.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? You know nothing about planes.’ “

But Cory learned and flew.

“I talked to him (Tuesday) night, normal conversation, how is it going,” Kevin Lidle said. “This is very, very strange. I don’t even know what to feel right now.”

What bothered him most, he said, was that as events were unfolding live to the world, Lidle’s wife, Melanie, and 6-year-old son, Christopher, were on a flight from New York to Los Angeles and had no idea what had happened to Cory.

“She loved him so much,” Lidle said of his brother’s high school sweetheart. “I’m hurt more about that right now.”

“Cory Lidle’s beneficiaries could lose out on a $1.5 million benefit from baseball’s benefit plan if it’s determined that he was piloting his plane when it crashed into a Manhattan high-rise condominium.

While Lidle wasn’t a member of the Major League Baseball Players Association licensing plan because he was a replacement player during the 1994-95 strike, the Yankees pitcher was covered by the union’s benefit plan.

The plan calls for a $450,000 life insurance benefit and has an accidental death benefit of $1.05 million. However, the plan – which applies to all big leaguers – contains an exclusion for “any incident related to travel in an aircraft … while acting in any capacity other than as a passenger.”

Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger, were killed when Lidle’s four-seat Cirrus SR20 crashed into a building on the Upper East Side. While Lidle was the registered owner of the aircraft, it has not been confirmed who was at the controls.

The person Lidle designated as his beneficiary was not immediately known.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.