Roy Halladay, 40, former Blue Jays and Phillies star pitcher, dies in plane crash

Last Updated on November 7, 2017 by CCAR Staff

Roy Halladay, a two-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher who retired from baseball nearly four years ago, has died in a single-engine plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. He was 40.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said during a news conference that Halladay’s ICON A5 aircraft went down about noon Tuesday near Holiday, Florida.

The sheriff’s office marine unit responded to the downed plane and found Halladay’s body. No survivors were found. They said they couldn’t confirm if there were additional passengers on the plane or say where it was headed.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating

Halladay recently received his pilot’s license and tweeted photos last month of himself standing next to a new ICON A5 as part of the plane’s marketing campaign. His father was a corporate pilot.

ICON aircraft had posted a video with Halladay trying out a new plane. The video showed Halladay taking delivery of a new ICON A5, a two-seat “light-sport aircraft” that can land on water.

In the video, Halladay said the terms of his baseball contract prevented him from having a pilot’s license while playing, and that his wife was originally against the idea of him getting the aircraft.

“She’s fought me the whole way,” Halladay said.

“Hard. I fought hard. I was very against it,” Brandy Halladay said in the same video, before explaining why she eventually understood and approved of her husband’s desire to have the plane.

The couple have two sons, Ryan and Braden.

Halladay was an eight-time All-Star and went 203-105 with a 3.38 ERA in his 16-year career with the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies. He threw a perfect game during the 2010 season and a no-hitter that postseason.

Halladay was nominated several times for the Roberto Clemente Award, given by Major League Baseball to players for sportsmanship and community involvement. The Halladay Family Foundation has aided children’s charities, hunger relief and animal rescue.

A 6-foot-6 right-hander, Halladay was a throwback on the mound. Durable and determined to finish what he started, Halladay won the AL Cy Young in 2003 after going 22-7 and the NL prize in 2010 after going 21-10.

When he retired, Halladay said he wanted to avoid back surgery.

“As a baseball player, you realize that’s something you can’t do the rest of your life,” Halladay said. “I really don’t have any regrets. You realize there’s other things for you to accomplish in life.”

He is eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2019.

“We are numb over the very tragic news about Roy Halladay’s untimely death,” the Phillies said in a statement. “There are no words to describe the sadness that the entire Phillies family is feeling over the loss of one of the most respected human beings to ever play the game. It is with the heaviest of hearts that we pass along our condolences to Brandy, Ryan and Braden.”

In a statement, the Blue Jays said the organization “is overcome by grief with the tragic loss of one the franchise’s greatest and most respected players, but even better human being. Impossible to express what he has meant to this franchise, the city and its fans.”

The A5 was a newer model from ICON, based in Vacaville, California.

According to the NTSB’s website, two other ICON A5s crashed earlier this year, the only reported U.S. accidents involving the aircraft since it debuted three years ago. Both were attributed to pilot error.

Last May 8, an A5 crashed into the side of a canyon during a flight at Lake Berryessa, California, killing the pilot and his passenger. The NTSB ruled the crash was caused by the pilot flying too low, causing the plane to strike the canyon wall.

A month earlier, another A5 made a hard landing in the water off Key Largo, Florida, injuring the pilot and his passenger. The pilot told investigators the plane descended faster than he expected. He tried to abort the landing but the plane struck the water, causing substantial damage to the aircraft. The NTSB ruled that the pilot had failed to properly maintain his descent rate.

ICON declined to comment after Halladay’s crash.

Other baseball players to die in plane crashes included Pittsburgh Pirates star Roberto Clemente in a relief mission from Puerto Rico traveling to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve in 1972; New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson piloting his own plane near his home in Canton, Ohio, in 1979; and Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle piloting his own plane in New York City in 2006.