It even came over the wire and around the same time of day, about 4:30 PM. The difference is, Halladay was already retired, while Munson was still an active player. That does not make it any less of a tragedy.
Harry Leroy Halladay III was born on May 14, 1977, in Denver. He grew up in the suburb of Arvada, and was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1995. He made his major league debut on September 20, 1998, at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Wearing Number 52, he pitched the 1st 5 innings against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, in a game the Jays won 7-5 in 12 innings.
Over the next 11 seasons, wearing Number 32 for the Jays, he drove the American League, and particularly the Yankees, crazy, building a 148-76 record. He used a four-seam fastball, a two-seam sinking fastball, a nasty breaking curveball, and a cut fastball that ranked with Mariano Rivera's as the best in the major leagues in that era. By the time he reached the Phillies, he had also developed a very tough pitch that was a cross between a split-fingered fastball and a changeup, which he called a split-change.
Blue Jays broadcaster Tom Cheek nicknamed him Doc Halladay, after John Henry "Doc" Holliday, a dentist who became one of the Wild West's most famous gunslingers despite years of suffering from tuberculosis. Despite what the TV show Wynonna Earp may say, the real Doc Holliday died even younger than Roy Halladay, just 36 -- and while Halladay was born in Colorado, Holliday died there, as, before the common use of antibiotics, TB patients often went there, because the mountain air was said to be good for their lungs.
He won 22 games and the American League Cy Young Award in 2003, but the Jays never got close to a Pennant race. This was the era of the Yankee-Red Sox stranglehold on the AL Eastern Division, and only in 2006 did the Jays even finish 2nd, and a distant one at that. There were times when Halladay was the only reason to watch the Jays.
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On December 16, 2009, looking to bolster their starting rotation after winning back-to-back National League Pennants, the Philadelphia Phillies traded Travis d'Arnaud, Kyle Drsbek and Michael Taylor to the lie Jays for Halladay.
It was a brilliant trade. Having to switch from 32, which the Phils had retired for Hall-of-Famer Steve Carlton, to 34, Halladay became the 1st Phils' pitcher since Carlton himself in 1982 to win at least 20 games in a season. This included a perfect game against the Florida Marlins at Sun Life (now Hard Rock) Stadium in the Miami suburbs on May 29, won 1-0 thanks to a Chase Utley line drive.
His 21st and last win of the regular season, on September 27, clinched the NL East. For the Phils, it was their 4th straight title; for Halladay, it was his 1st trip to the postseason.
And he made the most of it: On October 6, 2010, in Game 1 of the NL Division Series at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, he pitched a no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds. Shane Victorino scored a run and drove in 2 others, and the Phillies won 4-0.
It was only the 2nd no-hitter in postseason history, after Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. (If you had told someone then that 81-year-old Don Larsen would still be alive on November 8, 2017, and 33-year-old Roy Halladay wouldn't, no one would have believed you.) It also made Halladay the 5th pitcher to throw 2 no-hitters in 1 season, the 1st to do it since Nolan Ryan in 1973, and the 1st ever to pitch 1 in the regular season and 1 in the postseason. He also hit an infield single in the game, making him the 1st pitcher in postseason history ever to get more hits in a game than he allowed.
The Phillies swept the Reds in 3 straight. But Halladay was outpitched by Tim Lincecum in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series. He reversed that outcome in Game 5, but it wasn't enough, as the San Francisco Giants won the Pennant in 6 games. Still, Halladay became only the 5th pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both Leagues, joining Gaylord Perry, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens. Max Scherzer has since become the 6th.
Despite appearing in 8 All-Star Games, that 2010 performance would be the closest that Halladay would ever get to a Pennant. The Phillies won the NL East again in 2011, but lost the NLCS to the St. Louis Cardinals in 6 games. Then in 2012, the ceiling fell in on the Phils, as they followed the 1965 Yankees' pattern of everybody getting old or hurt, or both, at once, falling to .500, and below .500 the next.
Halladay was not immune: Having already missed the 2nd half of the 2005 season with the Jays, including being chosen to start for the AL in the All-Star Game, after his leg was broken by a line drive off the bat of Kevin Mench of the Texas Rangers, with the Phils he missed a quarter of the 2012 season with an injury, and 2/3rds of 2013 with another.
He last appeared in a major league game on September 23, 2013 -- away to the team now named the Miami Marlins, the same setup as his perfect game, albeit at Marlins Park in Miami proper. He was in so much pain that he couldn't get out of the 1st inning, and the Phils lost 4-0. It was an unfortunate way to end his career. In December, his contract with the Phils up, he signed a 1-day contract with the Jays, and retired as a member of their organization. He was only 36 years old.
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The injuries meant that his career statistics weren't as big as they could have been. He finished 203-105, for a .659 winning percentage. His ERA was 3.38, his ERA+ 131, his WHIP 1.178. He had 2,117 strikeouts against only 592 walks.
During the off-season, he, his wife Brandy, and their 2 children lived in Tarpon Springs, Florida, outside St. Petersburg. And, like Thurman Munson, he took up flying. It was a family tradition: His father was a commercial pilot. His Twitter header showed his plane, an ICON A5 amphibious aircraft (a.k.a. a "flying boat"), and his profile picture showed him at its controls.
Yesterday, November 7, 2017, at around 12:00 noon, his plane crashed about 10 miles off St. Petersburg, in the Gulf of Mexico. He was the only one aboard, and it took until around 4:30 PM for the police to confirm that he was dead. He was only 40 years old.
He becomes eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame in the election whose results will be announced in January 2019, a distinction also held by Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Todd Helton, Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt. He may now get a sympathy vote.
Would he have gotten in anyway? Baseball-Reference.com, a website which is your friend whether you know it or not, has a "Hall of Fame Monitor," for which it says a "Likely HOFer" has a rating of 100, and Halladay's was 126, suggesting he should easily get in. But they also have "Hall of Fame Standards," which is geared more toward career achievement, and for which the "Average HOFer" has a rating of 50. Roy's is 45, suggesting that he falls a little short.
Among starting pitchers in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era, with as many seasons as he had, 16, only Whitey Ford, Pedro Martinez, Lefty Grove and Christy Mathewson had higher winning percentages. Only Pedro, Juan Marichal, Tom Seaver, Curt Schilling, Bret Saberhagen, Fergie Jenkins, Don Sutton, Greg Maddux, Carl Hubbell, Robin Roberts, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and John Smoltz had a lower WHIP. Of those pitchers, only Schilling, Saberhagen and Clemens are not in the Hall of Fame. Schilling and Clemens have steroid clouds over them, and Saberhagen only won 167 games, as opposed to Halladay's 203.
Baseball-Reference also uses "Similarity Scores," to determine a player's top 10 most statistically similar players, usually weighted by position, so that players who played the same position usually make up most, if not all, of the top 10. Of Halladay's top 10, Zack Greinke and Justin Verlander are still active, and the former is a close call, while the latter will probably get in; Oswalt and Tim Hudson are not yet eligible, and both are borderline cases, probably falling a little short; Dazzy Vance, a borderline case, is the only one in; and Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Ron Guidry, Jimmy Key, and 1930s pitcher Lon Warneke are eligible but not in, and it's tough to make a case for any of them.
Given the goodwill that Roy Halladay built up, in Toronto, in Philadelphia, and in all of baseball, he may well have gotten in, even without this tragedy.
I'd hate to think he wouldn't have gotten in without it. But now, we'll never know.