USA Today Article on Buffalo Plane Crash & Baseball Cards

[Orioles1954]

Found this article on the front cover of this weekend's USA Today while shopping with my family tonight. Of the 50 casualties, the lone ground victim was an avid baseball card and memorabilia collector. Excellent read!

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2011-07-29-Doug-Wielinski-sports-memorabilia-plane-crash_n.htm

Enjoy,

James

[ChiefBenderForever]

Heartbreaking read thanks for posting.

[Leon]

Wow, I can't imagine playing with my caramel cards and having a plane fall on me. What a freak accident!!

[D. Bergin]

Fantastic article.

[GoldenAge50s]

What a great story! Thanks for posting! Esp interesting as I'm originally from WNY area.

[brickyardkennedy]

Very sad.

[Tim Zwick]

What a tragic story, I had never heard anything about a victim on the ground, let alone it being fellow collector. I'm not sure if I ever met Doug but his best friend from the article, Jim Macie (as he was known to most) was a fixture on the Midwest show circuit (Plymouth, Strongsville, Cincinnati, etc.) for many years and a great guy. Thanks for sharing James.

[Butch7999]

Hard to believe it's been two and a half years. That story's always with us -- the plane came down a block and half from our in-laws' place.
Did not know the fella was a fellow collector. Probably walked right by him many times at Antique World.
Good article by a homegrown Buffalo native (Brady also wrote for the Buffalo papers for many years).
To think the airline industry is still fighting against better training for pilots, despite the Clarence incident and the crash in France a month earlier that killed 228 in almost identical pilot-error circumstances...

[fkw]

Wow, thanks for posting...

PS. Those Buffalo Puzzles are in the SCD big book if I remember right, never seen one in person though.

[rhettyeakley]

Frank, they are tough. Each puzzle when assembld had a # code (usually on the player himself) that were redeemable for prizes (interesting tidbit on that set). I owned one one time along with the box that identified the player and never really got around to trying to put the puzzle together.

Obviously, the saddest thing about this story is the loss of life and the loss of one of our own but it is also sad that the things he loved and cherished were destroyed along with him. Strange and sad story!

[mintacular]

I like that guy from what I've read...

[101SOX19]

What a well written article about a man, his life and his passions.

[byrone]

How often do we get to read a journalists work these days and want to read it again, because it is so well written.

A job well done.