By Jim Scott
DNAinfo Senior Editor
MANHATTAN — The widow of former Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, who died in a tragic Manhattan plane crash, has moved on with her life and will marry the manager of her son's Little League team on Saturday in California.
Melanie Lidle, 37, will marry Brandyn Hayward, 36, in front of 280 guests in Glendale, Calif., the New York Daily News reported.
"We're absolutely happy for her," Cory Lidle's dad, Doug Lidle, told the News. "I've known the guy Mel is marrying for 15 years. He's a really swell guy. He's a baseball guy. But I'm sorry to tell you, he's a Dodgers fan."
Melanie's son Christopher was only six when his father died on Oct. 11, 2006. She enrolled him into the West Covina American Little League in 2007, the same Little League his father played in as a child. That's where she met Heyward, who was a team manager and now manages Christopher's Minor Division team, the News reported.
The wedding comes almost four years after her husband Cory's single-engine plane crashed into a condominium high-rise on E. 72nd St., killing him and his 27-year-old flight instructor Tyler Stanger.
Lidle was an avid pilot who got his pilot's license only eight months before the fiery crash. The single-engine Cirrus SR20 plowed into the 30th and 31st floors of the Belaire Apartments building on the Upper East Side and burst into flames.
Lidle's plane was "rolling uncontrollably" when it hit the apartment building, his widow claims in a lawsuit filed against Cirrus, the New York Post reported.
Witnesses said the Cirrus SR20 was upside down and out of control before the crash, according to papers filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court.
