http://www.sptimes.com/2006/10/12/C...__forever.shtml
Now a memory, forever a fighter
Cory Lidle remained a scab to many. He refused to let that be the end of
the story.

By JOHN ROMANO, Times Sports Columnist
Published October 12, 2006

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This is for Christopher, so that he may understand.

For, in the days ahead, he must come to realize that his father is never
coming home. That, for a boy of 6, the memories he holds today must last a
lifetime.

Cory Lidle died Wednesday when his plane crashed into a New York high-rise,
leaving behind a trail of debris and heartache.

Soon, the Lidle house will be filled with family and friends. They will cry,
and they will talk, and then cry some more. They will get on bended knee to
speak to Cory's son, and it will all seem too much for a child to take in.

Christopher will be told of his father's gentle heart. Of the pride and
devotion Cory had for his only child. Christopher will likely be told to
focus on better times, and to cherish days past.

And so this is a story for another time. A story Christopher should hear
only when he is old enough to appreciate what it means.

This is a story his father once told me.

It begins more than 10 years ago. Long before anyone outside of baseball
knew who Cory Lidle was, and before many inside the game even cared.

The story begins with a mistake. A mistake Cory forever regretted, but
refused to accept as the defining moment of his career.

It was in 1995 when the game was going through the greatest labor war it had
ever known, and Lidle was a 23-year-old hanging on to baseball by a seam.

Team owners decided the best way to pressure the players' union was to have
minor-league replacements cross imaginary picket lines. Most everyone knew
the plan was doomed to failure. Team officials were already imagining the
fallout and quietly told their best prospects to stay far, far away.

Lidle, unfortunately, was no one's idea of a prospect. He was a boyish
looking right-hander with a physique more suited to a desk than a ballfield.

He went undrafted out of high school and was released from his first
minor-league team. He spent time working in the kitchen at a bar and grill
and trying to get noticed while playing in some goshforsaken independent
league.

When he finally hooked on with the Brewers, it was just in time for the
labor war. Milwaukee brass gave him a choice - cross the picket line or be
released.

Lidle was scared. And nave. He offered to join the replacement players
without being paid, somehow imagining that it would make him less of an
offender.

Eventually, he suited up for two spring training games.

He pitched one inning.

And, for some, he became a permanent pariah.

"There were some guys, especially some of the pitchers, who disliked him,"
said Fred McGriff, a teammate of Lidle's in Tampa Bay in 1999-2000. "There
were times they got loud, maybe said some (harsh) things. You had a lot of
guys on that team who waited a long time to get their shots and they
resented what he did.

"From that standpoint, I'm sure it was pretty rough for him."

He played for seven major-league teams, and Lidle said the two years he
spent in Tampa Bay were, by far, the worst. Some teammates were openly
hostile. Most of the others just ignored him. McGriff, Lidle told me, was
his only friend.

For the most part, Lidle traveled alone. He ate lunch by himself. He rarely
shared cabs and never got invited to postgame gatherings.

On a bus ride in 2000, fueled by a bellyful of beer, some of the Rays
veterans began hazing the younger players. It all seemed fun and innocent
until their attention was turned to Lidle.

"Tell me it isn't true," one of them shouted. "Tell me you're not a scab."

Soon, it grew uglier. Shouts, insults and taunts. Feeling as if he had no
choice, Lidle challenged the loudest and drunkest to a fight.

"It's a shame that a decision he made at a fragile time in his life
implicated him over the course of a whole career," said Rick Williams,
Lidle's pitching coach with the Rays and a special assistant for baseball
operations in Tampa Bay. "For those who ostracized him, that's between them.
The guy I knew was a very personable, approachable, likable young man."

This story is not meant to re-open old wounds. It is, instead, a glimpse
into Cory Lidle's life. An explanation of who he was, and who he became.

This is a player ignored by scouts in high school, who managed to outlast
more than a dozen pitchers selected in the first round of the 1990 draft. A
player with a mediocre fastball who managed to earn more than $17-million in
his career. A player released, waived, lost in the expansion draft and
traded five times, yet was last seen in baseball's richest rotation.

That is the point of this story.

Not that Cory Lidle was, for some, a scab. Not that five minutes in some
forgotten spring game 11 years ago cast a cloud over his career.

The point is that he never quit. Not when scouts told him he was not good
enough, and not when teammates told him he was not welcome.

Crossing the picket line was foolish. He admitted that. But he would never
apologize for it, because Lidle said it was a youthful mistake. He meant no
malice and, ultimately, he was the only one who suffered any consequences.

So if someone wanted to hold that single afternoon against him, that was
their problem. Lidle said he had no time to waste on someone else's hatred.

So Christopher, this is the lesson you should someday know.

That a person's world can change just that suddenly. You wake up one morning
with a clear picture of who you are and where you are heading, and by
nightfall you have become a stranger in your own life.

Your father's life was like that. And he fought to overcome one afternoon
that could have destroyed him. I pray someday you will, too.